My husband is a huge board game fan, which means ours are stored in the open. I wish I had some suggestions, but I'm just as curious as you are! Our collection currently takes up an entire section of an Ikea Billy shelf.

You might like a coffee table that has a shelf. The storage location couldn't be more convenient if you play on the coffee table.

You can cut down on the amount of space if you get rid of the boxes and put the game components in their own little plastic box. Each game would have a board (that is labeled) and a small box (that is labeled) with the game pieces in them. I would laminate the game rules or you could just look online for the directions.

If you have any vintage editions, DO NOT separate the pieces from the box.

On Pinterest I saw that someone framed the board to each game and hung it on the wall as art. I thought it looked pretty cool. For the pieces, you can either put them in a sandwich bag and connect it to the back of the frame or keep them in small, labeled boxes. This was done in a basement/game room, so it worked with the decor. This may not work in your average living room.

Since I was a kid, my parents stored our board games in a big chest, in the middle of the living room. Decorative, while the games aren't exposed, but easily accessible - Kids and grown-ups alike have easy access to the chest's contents.

We have a lot of games (and puzzles), thanks to loving to play them with our 6 & 8 year olds. Ours are stored in low bookshelves under the windows in our small sun/play/office/desk/homework room. The bookcases are the translucent white modular ones from DWR. Since they are modular, we've used them in several ways in 2 different homes the last 8 years. We also have some filled with books. Mixed media :)

I suppose it would depend on the size of the boxes but maybe you could stand them in a large basket or a crate so you could flip through them. Kind of like this: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_LNt8U0Po8P4/TA5WDreqFSI/AAAAAAAACCc/cBelrxtR-a4/s1600/DSC_1054.jpg

Or maybe they could stand on a picture ledge?

We put ours in an ottoman in the middle of the living room.

I have seen somewhere where they were displayed on little hooks, like plates, facing out. It looked good, but I can't remember what they used.

How about picture shelves? I mean those long shallow 3" deep shelves meant for displaying pictures with constant changing locations. Like such: http://sarahjanestudios.com/blog/2010/06/the-smallish-library/ I think it would be cool to line all your board games up along a wall.

I wish I could get rid of their boxes and put them in a standardized clear bins, snap closed with a label in front. (note to Container Store: get on with it!) My 1st generation Pokemon board game is so huge that it can only be fit under the bed. The Chinese checkers has to be octagon for obvious reason. What bothers me is that Hasbro hasn't standardize their shapes and sizes. I mean, they can vary in depth according to content, but it would be nice to have them all lined up nicely.

I asked this exact same thing over on BoardGameGeek.com. My current solution is the spine book tower idea (which works great for some, not so great for others) but another suggest was the Expedit series from IKEA or using a storage ottoman.

Please share what you decide! Sorry I don't have anything more creative for you :-\

We have a board game addiction problem, too. We store ours in the living room in a Billy bookcase, behind a frosted glass door. That way, they don't distract the eye, but they add a bit of color and are easy to access.

Ours take up an entire linen closet. We probably have more than 100 games. My husband has a second weekend job at a game store, so we've amassed a LOT of games. Before the collection grew to that size, we stored them in a kitchen cart like this: http://www.target.com/p/Natural-Wood-Kitchen-Cart-with-Doors/-/A-518502, but it had wire doors so you could see inside. It didn't look too bad and fit probably 30 or so games. We had it along a wall near our entry, and we were able to put framed photos and pottery on top.

Storing and displaying board games is tricky, since all the boxes are different sizes.

AT had this post about storing board games:
http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/storing-board-g-115558

I like the look of the game pieces in glass jars, then display or store the game boards.

Maybe split them up and display some, store the rest. For instance, if you have vintage games or games you play all the time, display these on a shelf or easy access in storage. Maybe make them become their own 'display case' much like a stack of books or magazines on the floor or on a table which people put lamps or phones or flower vases upon. Color coordinating is one way to make them fun to display on a bookshelf, or purchase a magazine rack and stack a few in that. I had a similar problem until I purchased a large antique trunk, which became my coffee table and holds DVDs and boardgames. Good luck :)

@Adora I love you picture shelf idea! Very cute!

Get rid of the boxes. Many of those game boxes are filled with over 70% air. Find smaller boxes for cards, game pieces, and instructions. Stack them all together or get an organizing tray to put them all together. Keep all the boards together. You could tape the instructions to the under side of the board, just make sure you know them before you cover the board with pieces and can't get them. You could probably store all the pieces in a nice decorative box.

To second Funstraw's comment, the best decision is to stack like items together. Though it's largely dependent on which games you have, often decks of cards or game pieces will have a containing sleeve or box. If you happen to have containers to keep all the pieces from mingling, you can store all your game pieces in a nice wooden box and and all your game boards in a matching box of larger dimensions. It's definitely worth the extra 5-10 seconds of maneuvering to get your pieces and board out of the boxes in exchange for only having two boxes, which will be smaller and prettier overall.

Cheers!

We keep most of our games in the bottom of the Billy bookcases with glass doors. Some games are too big to fit in the narrower Billys though. We keep ours in the kitchen because we play games as a family at dinner. They're accessible and easy to see, and even more important when you have kids, easy and quick to put back up.

I had this exact problem, and solved it by ditching the existing boxes. Everything fit into these nice, plain, white boxes (from Ikea, for paper storage), which I was able to label using cut-outs from the old boxes. http://doggieeyes.blogspot.com/2011/06/board.html

If you're interested in repackaging the games, you might try your local arts & crafts store for same-sized storage ideas. I found this modular stackable container by darice intended for beading supplies at a nearby Michael's. I was specifically looking for something portable for a card game that had lots of additional stray counter pieces, but there were lots of options.

http://www.darice.com/ecom/ProductDetails.aspx?it=2025-286&oid=324254

If it matches your decor, what about a barrister bookcase? Extra dice and pieces could be displayed on top in glass jars as well. More expensive than billy or expedit but you can find one on craigslist for less than $100 and it would be a lovely conversation piece.
Also, when our childhood game boxes started falling apart, my mother covered the boxes in matching contact paper. It doesn't solve the size issue but might mitigate visual clutter if that's a concern.
Good luck...there are lots of neat ideas here :)

Oops, let me adjust that price point...not less than $100, lol.

I would love to read a whole article about this with pictures of some creative storage ideas! Thanks!

I've seen large white modular cubes in Container Store, but it's very expensive. The fact that the games are all in different sized boxes makes it difficult. My husband would go ballistic were I to throw away the boxes and repackage them all into identical boxes. He also insists they be all visible at once, so the idea of storing them away will not suit him. I am at wit's end. I think I will be storing them in the guest room on an entertainment center, just because the old ones sized to fit giant television sets are at least deep and wide enough to accomodate all the boxes.

We used to store our games in their original boxes in an Expedit. Now we've gotten rid of the boxes and we store the pieces in various glass jars - mason jars, cracker jars - and some clear plastic boxes. We keep the jars in a small 1920's china cabinet, with the boards in the drawer and the instructions in a binder. Some vintage or unique games stay in their boxes and fit either on the lower shelf of the cabinet or stacked on top. Not every game box needs to be saved, and the game pieces really look interesting in the different jars. The kids also think the games are more special, and they're definitely easy to clean up and put away.

I can't bear the idea of parting with the boxes.

in the past, i've stored mine under the coffee table, under a console record player, on a regular bookcase and most recently they're in my walk-through closet to a spare bathroom...but on the top shelf, and i have a home office in the closet space below. that seems to work well for me because i can use the office chair to reach the games (since they're so high up).

you might also try finding an old trunk and stowing them away in there. maybe even use the trunk as a coffee table so you've got it doing double duty =)

Monopoly
Risk

Great looking boxes that fit on a bookshelf.

If you want to go all-out, Geek Chic makes really lovely furniture built specifically for gaming needs. They have on item in particular that has an interesting look to it, and would be awesome at accommodating board game boxes of a variety of sizes & shapes (plus storage for extra pencils, dice, paper, whatever you need:

http://www.geekchichq.com/furniture/keep/

We had all of ours in our coffee table (a family heirloom, with a shelf). Well, almost all. My husband collects Monopoly games, and some of those were stacked separately, as was our copy of Starcraft (that box is HUGE) until recently.
Prior, we had them in a Billy bookcase, without doors. They fit fairly well, but it didn't look as tidy as I would have liked, as so many of the boxes were all different sizes.
Currently, we have them on a shelf in an Ikea Pax unit. Most of the boxes can sit on the shelf with the short end out, giving us three neat stacks. Our edition of Starcraft is sitting on top, because the box has nearly the same footprint as the Pax. If I wanted them to be more visible, I would probably get an Ikea kitchen base cabinet (same depth as the Pax) with glass doors.

Holy cow, Riddles, that piece is certainly cool but it costs more than I paid for my car.

I vote for "put them back in the closet and call it a day", Rosaleen. Unless they're vintage the boxes won't be that attractive (and if they are vintage, you probably shouldn't be playing with them!), so you'd be better off spending the money on a nice piece of actual art. I know you use the games a lot but I'm sure it's not so often that walking to the closet and opening a door is a mighty trial.

I would keep them out of sight - boxes are too busy looking - in a smaller space it's nice to strive for a calmer atmosphere. But keep them accessible (in an armoire maybe) ?

I say cover the boxes with craft paper like you would wrap books, (easy to remov ethe wrapping if you wanted. write the name of each game in a lovely shade of ink and stack them as you please, they might even make an interesting side table.

I don't recall the name (IKEA with their crazy names!) & doubt it is still made, but there probably exists something similar out there...We have an extendable black IKEA coffee table w/ a leaf -the top slides open to hold the leaf and a multitude of board games & photo albums. There is also a shelf on the bottom for additional storage.

We got wall brackets from home depot (~90 cents each), painted them to match the decor and fixed them on a narrow (but not too narrow) wall, 2 per row, 6 rows about 15 inches apart. You can stack about 3 boxes per level this way and only fix as many rows as you need.

I could never part with the boxes for most of my games. I'd love to get my hands on some old boxes for games, so I could cut them up and frame them!

My current plan of attack is a china cabinet, they hide in the bottom behind the doors, but I want something better... thinking an expedit would be a good alternative.

I had the same issue and since my collection was mainly vintage games and I loved how the boxes looked, I stacked the large games against a wall and put a piece of plexiglass on top and used it as a side table. i put a plant on top to discourage folks from using it to rest a glass or plate during a party (and inadvertently topple the stack). When I needed to get a game, it was simply a matter of removing the plexiglass and grabbing the one I wanted. Easy! The smaller ones fit on a couple bottom bookshelves and happened to fit perfectly, all tetris-style, so I just left them there. I got a TON of compliments on this and wish I had taken a photo before selling a majority of my games at a yard sale when I had to downsize a few years back. On a related note, I did the same thing with my collection of Time-Life LP sets (the kind that come in the large cardboard sleeves) but that time I used it as a low plant stand. I vote for displaying them, it's clearly something you guys enjoy and it's nice to see them out among your other belongings!

I'm in the process of gradually turning our basement playroom into a family entertainment center/home office now that our kid is tween-aged, and the large stack of board games is one of my problem areas too. So I really appreciate all these suggestions!

Our games have for several years been stored in stacked wooden crates, which we bought from some Amish folks 20+ years ago but these are similar: http://i-cdn.apartmenttherapy.com/uimages/ohdeedoh/crate-shelf-1.jpg. For a while we pushed them all together to form a makeshift coffee table, with the open sides out so we could access the games inside. Then we moved our living room coffee table to the playroom, so the crates are now stacked up in a tall tower with the games inside. However they are exactly where I want the home office to be set up, and they are overflowing, and don't allow room for any more to squeeze in there (we'd all like more big kid games, but I'm also sentimental about some of the outgrown ones. I am a hoarder, I know.) Not to mention that the bigger games stick out and look cluttered.

So I especially like the ideas in moodygirl's link (http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/storing-board-g-115558) of putting some of the boards on the wall as art (this would be perfect for my outgrown games - Chutes and Ladders stays, yay!) and keeping the pieces in decorative jars. The remaining boards in our collection, separated from their boxes, can go in our coffee table, which has a lift up top for storage. Or rotated from time to time on the wall with picture shelves. I can't wait to do this now!

As to separating boards from their boxes, I know this isn't an ideal solution for those without a lot of storage space, but if you have a garage or somewhere else they can go, why not keep the boxes elsewhere in case you have a need to reunite them later? That way you don't have to live with them in your day-to-day space, but you don't have to throw them away either? (or maybe this is the hoarder in me talking again..)

Whoa sorry that was a long comment. Oops!