Rant: I spent 2 years organizing my collection by color and it was a total mistake

I finally figured this out last weekend when I couldn't find a single game for game night. My shelves looked great, all rainbow-like and pretty. But when my group showed up and wanted something light to start, I spent 15 minutes scanning rows of blue and green boxes. My buddy Mike just grabbed Carcassonne from a random stack on my coffee table and said "dude, just sort them by player count or something." He was right. I switched everything to categories - party games, strategy, 2-player, family weight - and now I can actually grab what I need in seconds. Has anyone else fallen for the "looks good on Instagram" trap with their game storage?

2 comments

2 Comments

young.ryan2d ago

Honestly, "looks good on Instagram" is such a perfect way to put it. I fell for the same thing but with alphabetizing by publisher name, which sounds even dumber now that I say it out loud. But here's my real question - when you switched to categories, did you run into the problem where some games fit multiple groups? Like, Carcassonne is a family weight game but also plays 2 players great, so where does it even go? I've been wrestling with that exact thing since I tried your approach last month.

colethomas2d ago

You hit it on the head with Carcassonne being a pain to place, I've got the exact same issue with a few games myself. Where do you draw the line when something like that checks two boxes, do you just pick the main way you play it and stick with it? I'm thinking about just making a "mood" section for games that don't fit cleanly into one category, but I'm worried that's just kicking the problem down the road.