Small Home Gaming

Hi! I'm Chris, Small Home husband, father, and resident gamer. Gaming has played a huge part in my life for nearly 30 years, and I've been blessed with a spouse that not only games with me from time to time, but offers ideas and suggestions on how to make room for my habit in our small home.

I started playing games when I was 4 years old. Over the last 29 years I have amassed a not-so-tiny collection comprised of hundreds of games (both virtual and tabletop) and some 20 game consoles (not including mobile devices). Finding space for such a collection in our home was something of a challenge to say the least.

As Diane has mentioned before we’ve designated the bulk of the upstairs loft as my “man cave”. While I’m extremely grateful to have such a large percentage of our house as “my” space, it still means that I have to keep the vast majority of my game collection, as well as room to enjoy it, inside of around 100 sq. ft. (at half height no less).

To that end I’ve employed a couple of IKEA LACK TV units to hold most of my consoles, while I use a larger, discontinued IKEA TV stand to hold my monitors, a couple of my more spacious consoles, and a number of spare parts, cables, and older handheld consoles. My gaming PC sits on the floor between one of the LACK TV units and the larger TV stand.

As for games, well, I have more than 1,000. Fortunately most of those are digital downloads. Even so, I have over 200 physical titles I keep around for use on a variety of consoles. These are pretty much stored wherever there’s room. Most of my physically-owned PC games and about half of my SNES games are stored in a 2x2 KALLAX in the corner. The rest of the SNES cartridges are stacked neatly under one of the LACK TV units alongside all of my NES and N64 cartridges, and the majority of my aging disc based games (Wii, Playstation, etc.) sit on a bookshelf off to the side.

My Wii U and Nintendo Switch (along with their games) are housed in the living room (as is our Rock Band gear) where they’re easier for Sunshine to access. All but one or two of my tabletop games (board games) are stacked neatly behind the couch in three IKEA FRAKTA storage bags. A couple of my largest tabletop games live next door at my in-laws where I usually game with Diane’s brother.

 

We’ve literally spent years trying to find a way to create a gaming space for me that we can both live with. It means a lot to me to have some personal space, and though it’s not much, it wasn’t exactly easy to carve out. It’s not the biggest game room around, nor is it the “best,” but thanks to a very understanding wife (and a lot of help from IKEA), it is mine. Well, mine and the cat’s.