Organizing the Family Room (5) Home Families.com

Organizing the Family Room (5)

I am down to the last bit of my family room organization. The only thing left to do is the games. This isn’t going to be easy, since we have two shelves above and to the left of the fireplace that are packed with games. In addition, there are more games downstairs in the basement. Most of the games haven’t been played in a long time. Is this because we don’t socialize as much and the kids are too small to play some of them with us? Or is it because the games themselves aren’t very organized?

If you have been following along on the previous articles, you will remember all of the areas of the family room that needed organization:

Books
Magazines
Video tapes and DVDs
Cassettes, CDs and records
Games

Now we are at the end of the list!

Here are the methods I used to organize our games.

The first thing I did was to take all of the games out and place them on the floor. This allowed us to see exactly how large the problem was.

Next,we took a look to see if there were any games that we could donate right off of the bat. I checked these games for all of their pieces and then they went in the donation pile. These games will be donated to our local children’s hospital. Anything that was missing pieces got put in the trash pile and the cardboard boxes went into recycling.

Next, I organized the games themselves. I taped a Ziploc bag to the inside of each box lid to corral all of the loose, small pieces of each game, checking along the way to make sure that everything was complete.

Batteries were added to any game that required them.

And finally, a rubber band was put over each box, to make sure that it stayed closed.

With all of the games ready to go, we instituted a family game night. The rule is that we have to try a new game each time and then vote on our favorites. The top six or seven games will stay, and the others will be donated. Seven should fit nicely on our shelves, looking neat and organized.

As an added bonus, we have been getting in a lot more quality family time, and the television has remained off in the evening.

Mary Ann Romans writes about everything related to saving money in the Frugal Blog, technology in the Computing Blog, and creating a home in the Home Blog. You can read more of her articles by clicking here.

Organizing the Family Room (1)

Organizing the Family Room (2)

Organizing the Family Room (3)

Organizing the Family Room (4)

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