One of the biggest things I’m looking forward to about living in an RV is that I hope it will make me a domestic goddess. Some kind of superwoman who learns how to do a lot with a little. I especially want to learn how to be uber organized with fancy schmancy tips about decluttering. Then, I’ll be the wife my Hubby thought he was marrying all those years ago!
Even though I haven’t gotten into the RV yet, I did come across a very helpful tip for reducing the space that boxed games take up. Because while I’ve been able to purge 80% of what we own, I had a hard time letting go of our games. With a blog name like ‘Child’s Play’, though, did you expect anything less?!
Remember my game closet looking like this:
That’s what I wanted to take with me 3 weeks ago. Right now, the pile has grown even more. Our unschooling is so game based…these represent a huge chunk of our learning!
I was lamenting the fact that there was no way I’d have this much room to store the games when a friend of mine suggested I take the games out of their boxes and into plastic baggies. I didn’t think it would make much difference, but I happened to have 2 kids sitting around so I told them to have at it.
First they took the games out of the boxes and places them in giant 2.5 (or maybe 3?) gallon bags. If there were any small parts, those went into the medium or regular sized baggies which were then placed inside the big bags. Most important was to make sure the instructions were included with the game in the baggies. Within a few minutes, I could see a huge difference.
This pile of boxes:
was condensed down into this:
Eventually the pile of unused game boxes had grown to this size:
almost 2 feet high and at least 4 feet wide. This indicates that game boxes are massively inefficient and could all be downsized by more than half. We were able to get all the games into this:
Which is much more packable. It’s still a lot, but games are our thing.
So, if you want to downsize your games without getting rid of any, try removing them from the boxes they come in. Instant difference!
****note…I noticed that all our puzzles were put in plastic bags without the actual finished picture of the puzzle, so maybe have scissors handy to cut out the box tops for reference…
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Child's Play! 
That’s a great idea,,,also, you don’t need to take all of them each trip. Just take what you need for the time you will be gone. Those plastic containers will fit in the bays under the rig.
That’s brilliant! We’re big on board games too and it never occurred just how much wasted space is in the boxes.
I hope these tips become a regular feature of your blog. š
me too! That would mean I’m actually learning some to put into practice in my own life, lol. Not a strong point yet. š
yay – bags are a great idea. i hate big boxes, but my son is obsessed with keeping every single box for every single thing he has ever had. bwah! but finding a way to economize space is always a good thing!
your son sounds a lot like me…. š
Great idea! As a professional organizer I also try to tape my client’s game boxes back together….because let’s face it, those boxes are not made to last. Great visual with all of the empty boxes!
that’s such a great idea!
i’m so doing this. i can’t stop thinking about purging and i was a purger & organizer to begin with.
We did the same with our movies. We threw out all the DVD cases and slipped the DVDs into one of those large “notebook” cases usually used for CDs. It’s enabling us to take hundreds of movies (yeah. we’re movie people).
I might have to see what we can do about condensing the games now too!
What a great idea! I’m sooooo going to try this.
This is great! I have a couple of ideas that may help you to condense further, if you like.
Instead of cutting off the puzzle tops and putting them in the bag with the pieces, you could scan/ photocopy them and keep them in numbered plastic sleeves in a binder. You could also keep all your board game rules in the binder. Stick the binder in your tote.
You could further condense by numbering and stacking all game boards in the bottom of your tote, and then number the (now smaller) baggie with the pieces to go with the board.
oh, you’re GOOOOOOOD!!!
I have done that with the puzzles for a long time and it is awesome! I had never thought about it for our games though. That is awesome! Thanks for sharing your great ideas…again! You are sooo close to being done. I can hardly stand it!
I carry all the DVD’s in a CD organizer. I’ll probably download all the DVD’s to the 2T external hard drive where I keep all my personal & business files. HEY…you could scan or take a picture of puzzles, games, directions, etc to the hard drive & download them to a laptop when needed! Thats pretty good if I do say so myself…& I just did!
This is brilliant (as are some of the comments)!
It’s funny, looking at your game closet, I felt like I was looking at mine – so many of the same games! lol
The cream of the crop right there! ā¤ games!
Wow, this does totally show how overpackaged everything is! Great tip and great accomplishment right there
Crap. I just made the kids get rid of a whole bunch of games….where were you when I needed you? Guess we’ll have to buy more. Wait .. that seems contradictory.