15 years ago, I first discovered modern board games such as Ticket to Ride. I went on a buying frenzy that lasted years and resulted in me buying hundreds of board games that I never played. To make matters worse, whenever I got board games, I quickly unwrapped them, looked at the components, read the rules, and let them collect dust on the shelf. This shelf eventually became too full and needed to be cleaned up leading myself to fire sale these games on eBay at a huge loss.
Despite all my best efforts, I went through many phases of “let’s buy the new hotness” and then “purges” and thoughts of “I will never buy games till I play what I have first.” This buying habit got worse when I had kids because I was always buying board games to “play with them when they get older”. It wasn’t until I started practicing a loose form of minimalism that I curbed the urge to buy every hot game (to this date, I haven’t received a board game in the mail for a good 4 months now).
We still have a large board game collection sitting in the garage that’s still in shrink wrap from gifts, Kickstarters, and (of course) self-purchases. If you have kids, you know that kids will simply open any new toy up just for the thrill of unwrapping (we are the same way, we just have more willpower). To help myself and my kids to stop opening to new games, we are tracking every game we play through putting color dot stickers on the boxes. We do not open new games till we’ve played the previous game we opened at least 5 times.
Not only does this help with curbing enthusiasm, but helps with the following:
- When displaying on the shelf, I can immediately see what games we have played a lot and what games we should probably revisit playing more.
- Since the stickers are colored, and we use a color per year, if we haven’t played a game throughout the whole year, it’s time to donate it to the local library. This helps with keeping the game collection only to games we play and love.
- The action of putting a sticker on a board game box is as addictive as checking off a box from a to do list, this leads to us playing more board games!
- Some games take a while to learn and enjoy. While your first play of the game might be rough, your fourth play of the game may be super fun. On the other hand, if your first play was enjoyable, it doesn’t mean your fifth one will be. Playing a game 5 times gives the game a fair shake and helps you really determine whether you like it or not.
Ending, coming out of the pandemic, I feel society is still heavily divided between those who have a lot and those who struggle to make ends meet. As myself, who I feel is more on the “haves” side, I feel it’s important to be mindful of those who are not so fortunate and use some discretionary income to donate and help those in need — not buying what you don’t need will help with this.
