We have a problem. We own a lot of games (some might say too many), and despite having a limited amount of room, we keep buying more games! We’ve reorganized several times because you can only stack games so high before it becomes a serious hazard. The more classic games (like Sorry!) that we’re more likely to play when our son gets older have been put into totes in the garage, and games we rarely play are tucked out of sight in the hard-to-get-to cabinet.
It wasn’t enough.
Then we found Bit Boxes on Kickstarter, and it looked like the perfect solution.
As most game enthusiasts know, a board game box is designed to accommodate the size of the board. This means there’s often a lot of wasted space in the box. In fact very few games utilize all of the box space. This means games often take up a lot of space on our shelves, cabinets, and closets. Too much space, really. Bit Boxes help solve that problem.
A Bit Box consists of two board sleeves and four drawers. Each drawer can hold various box configurations: 1 x-large box, 1 large and 1 small box, 2 medium boxes, 1 medium and 2 smalls, or 4 smalls. The idea is to store the boards (and sometimes the rules) separately from the rest of the game pieces, and store the game pieces in smaller boxes. The boxes and drawers are then labeled, so we can easily find the game we’re looking for.
While we were waiting for our Bit Boxes to arrive, we just couldn’t let go of this idea of putting games into smaller boxes. We had some Loot Crate and Japan Crate boxes, so we decided to try it out. We managed to shrink down 9 games, which was really cool because we were traveling for Christmas. We were able to take 5 games with us in the space 1 game would have taken up!
We were so ready for Bit Boxes, especially since we also ordered a Bit Box Mobile, which is designed to take games with you on the go.
Finally they arrived! 3 Standard Bit Boxes and 1 Large Bit Box Mobile, and we started Bit Boxing. Since this is a brand new product, we weren’t sure what size boxes we needed for the drawers, so we went conservative. The Large Bit Box had 1 x-large and 1 large box, but we actually needed more large boxes. So we ordered 2 more Bit Boxes, this time both Larges.
It’s amazing how much fits into these Bit Boxes. The first night we got rid of 32 game boxes, fitting all those games into 2 Bit Boxes!
From this: |
To this: |
We kept going. We moved all the games we had previously stored in Loot Crate and Japan Crate boxes into bit boxes as well.
We haven’t decided what we’re going to put in the Mobile, but that’s also the beauty of Bit Boxes. When we decide what we want in there, we just remove the boards and the boxes from the regular Bit Box, and slide them into the Mobile! Some relabeling is required, but that’s hardly any work at all.
There are still some games Bit Boxes aren’t good for. We left Legendary, Smash Up, and other similar games in their original boxes. There was no reason to mess with our Alhambra Big Box or 7 Wonders (since we have the Broken Token organizer for that). Games with long boards like Mister X don’t really work well either, so we’re not going to Bit Box every game we have, but we’re thrilled with the amount of space we’re saving. As a plus, we still have some room in our Bit Boxes for future game purchases!
We also saved some tops and sides of some of the boxes because we like the artwork. We’re working on ideas for what we can do/decorate with them, but that’s for later. For the most part we simply broke down the boxes and got rid of them.
So if you too find your living space being taken over by boxes and boxes of board games, you should consider getting some Bit Boxes.
Before:
After:
