A few weeks ago, I found myself at my local Rona, looking for a shelving unit to store and display my video games. To my surprise and amusement, I found a wall-mounted shelving unit specifically designed for gamers. It was shaped like a vertical paper storage unit, where your console would sit in the middle. The top was closed-off and had slots to store about 8 games. The unit also featured a hook on the side to hang a plastic guitar.
For most owners of a vertically-standing video game system, this solution would suffice. However, this shelving unit was horribly inadequate for me.
Over the years, I have amassed an unhealthy number of consoles, controllers, games and peripherals. A few years ago, when I realized that having all this video game stuff on the floor wasn't going to cut it anymore, I bought a bunch of giant plastic totes to store away all my stuff. This was an improvement from laying things out on the floor, but it didn't lend it self well to aesthetics or user-friendliness. They looked awful in a room, weren't easy to get stuff out of and it looked like I was storing away kids toys. Well, they sort of are, but you know what I mean.
To address usability, I invested in a plastic drawer unit. I kept all the old games and consoles in the totes, and moved all the new games and controllers into the drawers. It worked really well for that, and looked a bit better than the totes. However, the plastic overload does look cheap. As a student working between upwards of three part-time jobs on top, it was the best I could afford.
For a while, I even had all of my old and new consoles displayed on an old TV stand. I actually spent 2 hours wiring all of the consoles to my TV to create an ultimate nerd hub of sorts. I decided to ditch this setup because it got way too messy.
Most recently, I came away from a out-of-business Solutions sale with some heavily discounted real shelving. I'm really proud of it and I think it's a good first step into creating an aesthetically tasteful and practical video game space. Ideally, when I move into my own place, I'd like to have a slick-looking video game setup that displays my video game stuff with pride without looking overly intimidating and nerdy.
For now, I have a combination of totes, plastic drawer units and shelving for my stuff. Hopefully I'll be able to complete the gaming setup of my dreams. And no, that dream setup doesn't look anything like the picture below.
