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How do you store your bigger games that don't fit your shelf?

Hi friends!

Recently-ish I move to my own appartment with my SO and bought a 5x5 IKEA Kallax to store all my boardgames. Picture attached.

Unfortunately some games are just too big for the Kallax, I can't store them neither vertically nor horizontally. For the longest time I've just had them just on top of the Kallax freely, but recently we (finally) got an AC unit and they would block the airflow.

Currently they're sitting on the floor but I feel sad for them :P

I considered getting a small Kallax, like a 2x2 or something and put them on top, but seems a bit overkill and I'm not sure it would be aesthetically pleasing.

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21 comments
  • I went with wider shelves for this reason. The Kallax looks great but not necessarily the most practical way to store games.

    • @donio bingo. I'm of the opinion that Kallax are the low hanging fruit of boardgame storage; looks nice enough, but just isn't optimized for the job. I use an old bookshelf with adjustable shelving that I took the doors off of and that allows me to use almost every cubic centimeter of space. That means I can fit anything up through the BattleCon big box set on it (so 2x the El Grande big box) without my difficulty.

      The super long stuff that is also wide is where I run into problems; stuff like Kaivai where it's both long and wide gets stuck on top. I generally don't have a ton of those games so it's ok.

      • are the low hanging fruit of boardgame storage

        It was definitely a budget option for us. It looks nice enough and I don't think I can find something cooler for 120 euros.

        • @pathief your kallax alternatives for the frugal end of storage amounts to two options:

          1. you go to a bracket system that is mounted on the wall. For years we did this with books and games. You end up buying boards and sanding/staining/painting yourself, but it's adjustable once you get the brackets mounted (and you can even mount them so that they are "flowing" as it moves around the room instead of being constrained by furniture or other things). The downside is when you move, you have to patch the holes.
          2. in the US, you can get antique furniture at yard sales or other places that you can sand and refinish on the cheap as well. That's about how we came into ours.

          Both of these require some work though (although, you can say Kallax does as well with assembly). It's a question of what are you optimizing on; space utilization, appearance, etc. Space was a premium for us.

          Let's see how pictures federate across Lemmy/Mastodon systems. Attached is (should be?) a photo from earlier this year of my adjustable book case. Some stuff has moved around, but it's illustrative of just how little space is wasted. The Eldritch Horror set is now too big and heavy to store anywhere other than the floor, that's our one exception to the rule.

21 comments