Board Game Storage: 100 Games in an Apartment

Board game storage in a small home comes down to three decisions: what to keep, what to shelve, and what to shrink. Get those right and a hundred games fit in the space most people give to a bookcase and a closet shelf. Get them wrong and you have a tower of boxes in the hallway and a partner who has started mentioning it.

This is a practical guide. No custom cabinetry, no garage. Just a system that works in a one-bedroom and scales as the collection grows.

How much space do 100 board games take?

More than you expect, less than you fear. A standard large box, the Ticket to Ride size, is 30 by 30 by 8 centimeters, roughly 12 by 12 by 3 inches, and that footprint became the industry’s default. A hundred of those stacked flat would run about 26 feet tall. Nobody has that.

But collections are not all big boxes. A realistic hundred-game shelf might be a third large boxes, a third medium, and a third small card games. Shelved efficiently, that lands somewhere around two tall bookcases, or one bookcase plus a closet shelf and a drawer. Your mix will move that number in either direction.

The point is that storage is a design problem, not a space problem. Most apartments have the room. They do not have the system.

Should you store board games vertically or horizontally?

Horizontally, flat, with the lid up. This is the one rule almost every long-time collector agrees on.

Stored on their side like books, boxes let components slide and shift. Punchboards bow. Insert trays dump their contents into a pile at one end. Open a vertically stored copy of Wingspan after six months and you will find eggs in every corner.

Flat storage keeps everything where the insert put it. Stack no more than five or six boxes per pile so the bottom one does not crush, and keep the heaviest at the bottom. If you must store something vertically because of shelf shape, bag the components first so they cannot migrate.

The one exception: small card-game boxes with a single deck inside. Those are fine on their side, which lets you store them like a row of paperbacks and see every title at once.

What kind of shelf works best for board games?

Any shelf that is deep enough, strong enough, and adjustable. That is what to look for, in that order.

Depth. Most bookcases are 11 to 12 inches deep. Large game boxes are 12 inches square, so they overhang slightly on a standard shelf. A shelf 13 to 16 inches deep holds them fully and leaves room for a second row of small boxes in front.

Strength. Games are heavy. A shelf full of big boxes can weigh more than a shelf of books. Look for solid shelves, metal brackets or pins, and a unit that is anchored to the wall. Particleboard sags over a year under game weight; thicker shelves and shorter spans hold up.

Adjustability. Game boxes come in a dozen heights. Fixed shelves waste vertical space. Adjustable pins let you set one bay at 13 inches for the big stuff and another at 4 inches for card games.

Cube-style units are the common choice because the cubes happen to be close to a large-box footprint. They are not the only answer. A deep, sturdy bookcase with movable shelves often holds more per square foot.

Storage type	Best for	Watch out for
Deep adjustable bookcase	Mixed collection, visible	Must be anchored; check shelf weight rating
Cube unit	Large boxes, modular	Shallow cubes overhang; fixed sizes waste space
Closet shelf	Overflow, rarely played	Out of sight means rarely played
Under-bed bins	Expansions, flat boxes	Hard to browse; good for archive
Drawer or cabinet	Small card games, dice, sleeves	Easy to lose track of what is inside

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How do you cut a collection down without regret?

Storage is easier when there is less to store. Before buying a shelf, cull.

The question that works is not “do I like this game?” It is “when did I last play it, and when will I play it next?” If both answers are “I’m not sure,” it goes in a box by the door. Keep the box for a month. If you did not miss anything in it, sell or give it away.

A few patterns show up in nearly every collection:

• Duplicates in function. Three gateway games that fill the same slot. Keep the one your group picks.
• Games that need a player count you never have. A six-player-only game in a household that hosts four.
• Games you own because of a sale, a campaign, or a review, not because anyone asked to play them.
• Expansions for games you no longer play.

The best home for an unplayed game is a shelf where it gets played. A local game lounge, a library with a game collection, a friend who just started hosting. If you are in Indianapolis, we would love to talk about how donated games end up on a curated lounge library.

How do you make big boxes smaller?

Many boxes are mostly air. Downsizing is how a hundred games fit where sixty would otherwise go.

Rehome card games. A game that is one deck plus a rules sheet does not need a 10-inch box. Move the deck to a labeled small container and recycle the box. Keep the rules folded inside. Sushi Go, The Crew, and most small-box games shrink to a quarter of their footprint.

Consolidate expansions. A base game and its expansions usually fit in the base box once you remove the inserts. Ticket to Ride with two map packs is one box, not three.

Replace inserts with bags. The plastic insert is often the biggest thing in the box. Pull it out, bag the components by type, and the lid closes flatter. Many boxes then stack tighter. Small zip bags and a few rubber bands do most of the work.

Store the box art. If a game lives in a generic container, cut the cover art off the lid and slip it in. You will know what it is at a glance.

Be selective. Some inserts are excellent and make setup faster. Wingspan’s tray, for instance, earns its space. Downsize the air, not the function.

How should you organize games so you actually play them?

A collection you can see is a collection you play. A few habits that help.

Shelve by weight, not alphabet. Light games together, mid-weight together, heavy together. When someone asks “what should we play,” you look at one shelf instead of scanning all of them. This also mirrors how a game night is sequenced: opener shelf, main event shelf, closer shelf.

Keep a reach shelf. The eight to ten games your group plays most, at eye level, nearest the table. Everything else is the archive.

Rotate seasonally. Every few months, swap three games from the archive onto the reach shelf and three off. Games you had forgotten come back into play. It costs ten minutes.

Label the spines you cannot see. Flat-stacked boxes hide their titles. A small label on the visible edge saves pulling the stack apart.

A storage system is just a way of making the next game night easier to start. The shelf is not the point. The game is the reason. The people are the point.

FAQ

Is it better to store board games flat or on their side?

Flat, lid up. Vertical storage lets components shift and inserts spill. Only small single-deck card games are safe on their side.

How deep should a board game shelf be?

At least 13 inches to fully hold a standard 12-inch box. Standard 11-inch bookcases work but boxes will overhang slightly.

How do you store board games in a small apartment?

Cull first, then use a deep adjustable shelf for the games you play most, downsize card games into small containers, and move expansions into their base boxes.

How many board games fit on a bookcase?

A tall bookcase with adjustable shelves holds somewhere in the range of 40 to 60 mixed-size games stored flat, depending on how many are small card games and how deep the shelves are. The common 31-by-80-inch bookcase is only 11 inches deep, so a 12-inch box overhangs by an inch; measure before you buy.

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