So I’ve talked about game rooms a number of times before, but there’s more as to how you store your board games. In particular, as I cycle games in and out, how often do I want to resort them or can they just kind of go anywhere? I am probably one of those people will sort them more often than others might. Why, because I find it relaxing, but how do you sort and store board games?

Storage

Now this depends a whole lot on your space. There are a lot of good storage solutions out there. The most common one you’ll hear about are the Kallax shelves form Ikea. That is the cubby shelf that I have in the background on my videos and you’ll see them around a lot. But they aren’t the only option. Growing up we had games stored in a trunk. People put them in a closet or in a book shelf.

Another common solution is basically bakery shelving for bread. This works well if you have a lot of games, a hard floor, and maybe a little less room than you’d like. It’d allow you to roll them around. The rolling around means that you could keep them packed up tighter to only have to roll them out at times. Like I said, a good situation if you have less room to keep more games available.

There is a reason why I do like them out of a closet. I have a few of them in the closet, but those are harder to see, that means that they’d get played less. I know I have a few games in my closet right now that I need to get played, and I even have a doors for the closet opened. But really, this article is about sorting, so let’s get to that.

How Do You Sort Your Board Games?

So, this is maybe a bigger question. For people, storage is often set with how your place is set-up, but sorting games is definitely it’s own animal. And there are a lot of different theories as to how to sort. Let’s run through a few of them.

By Color

This one is a little bit silly, but looks really cool. When you sort by color you get kind of a gradient that flows throughout your shelf. However, this is what I’d consider about the least useful way to sort your games. I think to actually use it you’d need to create an index book. So you’d need to create an alphabetical index to find where games are. That seems like unnecessary work.

By Size

This one doesn’t have a cool a look, but works well for some people who have to stack on shelves more. You want to put your larger stuff down lower so it’s both easier to get off the shelf and balance. This way again could use an index, but I remember the size of a game better than the color of the box. But with a Kallax shelf this doesn’t make as much sense. The cubbies allow you to store vertically or horizontally.

By Mechanics

This has been the one that I’ve kind of gone with, well this and the next one. But sorting by mechanic works pretty well because it gives you some flexibility for adding games. If there is room in the deck builder area, you don’t have to place it by a certain color, size, or letter. The downside is that some games use a number of mechanics. Dune: Imperium and Lost Ruins of Arnak are two examples of this. Those two games are deck building and worker placement. So which category do you put it in?

By Theme

Another way that I kind of do is by theme. So all the Lord of the Rings games in one area, all the Lovecraftian games in another. This is similar to the mechanics option, but depending on the type of gamer you are, this might work better. I tend to have a number of games for a given theme. So by theme works pretty well for me.

By Grouping/Expansion

This one is a bit like the previous two. But let’s think about it this way. Tainted Grail is an adventure game with a grim dark fantasy setting. I can fit all of it in a single Kallax cube. I don’t need it to be next to the other adventure games or the other grim dark games. Since it all fits by itself it goes in it’s own cube. Dice Throne doesn’t go next to King of Tokyo though the mechanics can be similar because I have a lot of Dice Throne, put it all together on a shelf. The downside is that you just kind of need to know.

By Alphabet

Finally, we have alphabetical. This one actually has some more issues than it might seem. Mainly that you need spaces around each letter. It ebbs and flows as I add and get rid of games what letter has the most games. So I’d need to keep a fair amount of space by most of the letters.

So What Will I Go With?

That’s the tough question. Probably some combination of, again, by mechanic, theme, and grouping. And even with that I’m going to then inventory where stuff are in terms of cubes. On Board Game Geek you can add in inventory notes, so I’ll make a system for determining which spot they are in. Why do it that way, because it requires the least adjustment over time. I can leave gaps where I want and create gaps as I sell and it doesn’t matter as much.

What is right for you though, that’s a good question that you’ll have to decide. I do think that theme or mechanic are really nice for giving you flexibility in how you leave space for a growing collection. It doesn’t have as much of a specific spot where to put stuff. You just have an area where the game needs to go.

But how do you sort? Are they just generally shoved into a closet or do you have a particular way?

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