Getting and staying organized is a constant endeavor.  As a parent, there seems to be a never ending sea of plastic toys in every room of the house.  As a homeowner, there is a never ending list of maintenance and upgrade tasks.  As a game collector, there is an accumulation of more and more awesome video games that are added on a regular basis.  How do we keep them all organized and why is it important?



Why bother organizing at all?

Seems like an odd question, but seriously, why?  I can only speak for myself when I say that I find great joy in cleanliness, order, and the ability to present a beautiful collection.  My wife is constantly rolling her eyes at me when I go on a "cleaning spree" at 2 a.m. because clutter in my house gives me anxiety and I can't sleep until it is cleaned up.  That's not to say that I am super clean and my wife is messy, far from it.  I just can't let the clutter go for very long before addressing it.  We could spend some time exploring the psychology of why we are the way we are, but the short answer is that I just love a clean room and organization.  I love knowing where everything is and being able to access things quickly.  If I can't find something I'm looking for I get a little nutty.

How do I get organized?

I find it very helpful to have a routine.  I don't acquire games nearly as often as I used to so the routine has become easier to maintain.  It's really quite simple:

-Acquire new games/systems
-If the games/systems require cleaning, add them to the game cleaning area of the house (Yes, I have one of these).  Once they are clean, move on
-If keeping the game, add to RFGeneration Collection and add to shelf
-If selling/trading, add to sell/trade shelf.

Simple.  I'm going to be adding one more step to the routine the next time I acquire a game.  If RFGen doesn't have a box, manual, or cart scan, submit the scan to RFGen

That routine helps me keep all of my INCOMING items organized.  Once they are in the collection or on the shelf, I'm always looking for ways to tweak the organization of the collection.  One of the first things I did with my boxed NES collection was to put all of the Black Box games together.


This looked awesome, so I moved on to one of my other favorite subsets, Konami Silver Box Games. 


OOH! This is fun!  What else can I group together?

Nintendo non Black Box:


Capcom:


If I had a bigger Genesis collection I would organize those by box art type also.  System boxes are a bit of a chore.  I use Ikea Billy bookcases for the bulk of my collection, so the tops are deep enough to accommodate most system boxes.  I've been thinking a lot about replacing the Billys with a more shallow bookcase like the Atlantic one holding my boxed NES games.  If I do that, I will probably end up installing some kind of floating shelf above the bookcases for system boxes.


What about systems themselves?

Another toughie.  The ultimate goal would be to have as many systems as possible hooked up and functional.  That's a bit of a chore in itself with the number of available power connections and A/V ports necessary to get everything hooked up from 2600-360.  Here is my current solution:


This is a piece of furniture from Ikea called the Kallax.  What I really liked about it was the different sized compartments.  It used to be filled with more systems, but the turntable and records bumped a few systems out.  This is just the secondary gaming location.  I still have to figure out a system storage solution for the primary site which is currently a big mess of systems, wires, and Priority Mail Flat Rate boxes filled with controllers.

Speaking of controllers

How do you keep dozens of controllers organized?

This one has been bugging me for a while.  I've tried flat rate boxes, Sterilite plastic drawers, coiling the controllers on top or near the systems.  None of these methods met my desire of cleanliness, presentation, and accessibility.  The solution came from our very own singlebanana who has his controllers organized on peg board in his gaming room.  I didn't think I could convince my wife to allow a pegboard wall of gaming controllers in a semi-common area but she agreed. 

Here is the wooden frame I build to keep the pegboard off the wall:


And here is it with the classy white pegboard mounted:


I'll be adding a decorative trim after our next trip to Lowes which will make it even classier.  Big thanks to Rich for reminding me of his awesome pegboard idea.  Now my controllers are accessible and presentable.  Speaking of controllers, here is an oft overlooked and VERY good third party Genesis controller.


That's all on staying organized for now.  If you have a system that works for you, please share.  I'm always looking for organizational tweaks and so are many other folks around here.

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