Oh The Games We Play!

I've been so busy since school started with homeschooling one child, which turned out to be much more work than expected but also more enjoyable, and working from home, which I couldn't do without our awesome team...there is no "I" in "team"!  Not to mention the million other things that MUST be done as a wife and mother to 5.  When you add all the things I want to do there need to be 48 hours in a day!  However, I was getting really sick of seeing our book shelves that hold all of our games looking like a twister just blew through (Helloooo Dorothy!) so I took a few minutes out to do some organizing.

Game Book Shelf - Before

Ewwwwww....Right?

So off I went to the dollar store  to see if they had some containers I could use - on the cheap...because that's how I roll.  They had some but I wasn't impressed so we headed over to the local Wal-mart.  I hit the jackpot.  I found these little doosies that had a touch of color as well.  They were only a buck and are a better quality than those found at the dollar store.

I wanted to put all of the games in containers that matched so I found these as well.  These were $3.50 or so but I splurged and bought what I needed.


More expensive but just what I wanted

So then the kids and I went to work.  We put more than one game in a bin and used ziplock baggies to separate pieces and/or games. Below you see the Monopoly game.  Money is paper clipped and put in one baggie, cardstock cards are rubberband together and all the playing pieces are in another baggie.  This board happens to fold into a square...thank you very much...however, not all the boards would fit..wouldn't you know.

Which is where the final container comes in.  It isn't perfect but it works. My Sorry board was too long so I cut it like the Monopoly board.  WARNING!  They don't make them the same as they used to so my board broke in thirds...Nothing a little duck tape didn't fix.  Duck tape is not only for the men anymore!

The games that don't have boards or have boards that don't fold neatly into my wonderful square containers were put in the dollar containers separated into plastic baggies and the boards were put in the "game board" container.  I then used Avery 5265 Full Sheet Labels and cut them to the size I wanted.  I used those because I had them but next time I would use Avery 48264 Shipping Labels.

The end result looks like this...oh yes! I can live with that!

Now for the question of the hour...does it work? Do the kids keep it nice? The answer is absolutely yes! They even played a couple games they have NEVER played. Our shelves have looked like this for over a month already and it still looks the same. SUCCESS!