this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2023

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How do you store your bigger games that don't fit your shelf? (feddit.de)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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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[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

We have some Ikea Billie shelves with the glass doors and adjustable shelf height. The bottom shelf is extra tall but since it's not deep enough, the bigger boxes are there on an angle.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They don't fit, they're either too tall/wide or way too deep :/

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Adjustable shelves on the Billie model

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

In my previous home I had a couple of billies but the shelves are all noticeably curved from the weight. It was much easier to manage, tho.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

I build my 5x5 but didnt add some of the vertical slats in. Its a little warped since we took out too many but having a 2-wide whole fits our wide games.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

The ones that don't fit inside a Kallax cube - you should hear my guttural growl when the smaller side is exactly 1 centimeter larger than the cube width - then it goes on top of one of the Kallaxes.

Thankfully it's not too many games that don't fit and I have four Kalaxes (ranging from 3x4 to 5x5) to put stuff on top of.
Still, I wish game designers and publishers tried to respect those standard measurements whenever possible.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I just buy wider shelves for the wide-box games: https://imgur.com/a/otbkAdm

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Beautiful 😍

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm pretty sure just like transport containers were standardized by ISO to make transport easier, game boxes should be standardized to fit in Kallax.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Standard box sizes in general is something I'd really really like.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

While we also use Kallax for this purpose, we did not go with a 5x5, we went with individual units of 4x1 and 2x1. We attached them to the wall in rows the 4x1 at the top, some space, one 2x1, some space and another 2x1 with doors. It opens the option to store things on top of the units itself. We usually used it a bit like a display for the games we played most.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

That setup sounds really sweet!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Built my own. Fits ticket to ride Europe (special Edition), and a few other boxes, all while being above my dog's crate. Not the answer you were looking for, I assume.

Edit: photo attached.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You built that yourself?! Hats off to you my friend!!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Thanks. The worst part was the fact that buildings never make 90⁰ angles, so mounting it was tricky. But it's been there a year now and it's not moving. Some day I'll put a long kallax like shelf above it to span the doorway, but I'm in no rush, too many other projects.

Edit: my favorite part is the storage in the back, it fits a couch table on one level and maps, cards against humanity and a few other long things on the other.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

@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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

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

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.
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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

On top of the shelf cluttered af duh

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

We got Box Throne brand shelves.