The KonMarie Method for BoardGameGeek: Trade Board Games That Don’t Spark Joy! [Free Tool]

Japanese organizing consultant Marie Kondo made waves around the world with her bestselling book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: the Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing. In her book, Kondo expounds upon her unique technique for mindful “tidying up” known as the KonMari Method.

Instead of focusing on storage and putting items away, the KonMari Method emphasizes decluttering by means of systematically discarding items.

The KonMari method can be summarized as follows:

1. Tidy your entire space all at once. Don’t stop with your Kalax.
2. Visualize your ideal lifestyle and ask yourself why it is you want that lifestyle.
3. Tidy by category, not by location. For instance, all of your board games.
4. One item at a time, ask yourself does this “sparks joy”?
   • It’s an emotional process rather than an intellectual one. For instance, don’t keep a game purely becasue it’s your only game with both worker placement and area control. It has to elicit a joyous feeling when you hold it in your hands and think about the game. If an item does not spark joy, discard it. When discarding an item muse on its contribution to your life and let it go with gratitude. For instance, you can be really grateful the role your gateway game had for you in the hobby and then let it go.
5. Lastly, once everything has been discarded then you may organize.

Trade Your Games on BoardGameGeek Using our Free Tool and the KonMari Method

In order to help you tidy-up your board game collection, Board Game Squad has built BGGTidy, a small web app to help you apply Marie Kondo’s KonMari method to your game collection.

To get started, head over to BGGTidy and login using your BoardGameGeek username and password.

BGGTidy will start importing your board game collection from BGG. Depending on the size of your board game collection, this may take some time. Please be patient.

When it is done importing your game collection, you’ll see your first board game appear.

As described in part 4 of the KonMari method above, ask yourself “does this board game spark joy”?

If it does in fact spark joy, click the green button and indicate that it “Sparks Joy”! The next game in your collection will then load, prompting you once again to make the same decision.

If you determine it’s time for you to part ways with the game, thank it for its contribution to your life and the hobby. Proceed to click the red button, and “Trade It”!

Instead of forcing yourself to actually dispose of your board games that no longer sparks joy, I deviate slightly from Kondo’s advice and encourage you to trade it for a new board game that will bring you new fun and experiences.

BGGTidy will automatically add the game that didn’t spark jou to your BoardGameGeek trade list.

To see your board game collection, navigate to your BoardGameGeek profile:

https://boardgamegeek.com/user/{your username}

or you may manage within the collection interface:

https://boardgamegeek.com/collection/user/{your username}

The game should now be found in your “For Trade” collection:

As with the other button, after you’ve made your selection, you will be prompted to decide on your next game until you’ve gone through your entire “owned” collection on BGG.

Once you’ve finished, make sure you’ve added some games you’d like to acquire to your “Want In Trade” list and then head over to BoardGameGeek’s trade tool.

This will enable you find other users on BoardGameGeek that want the games you added to your For Trade list for exchange for the games you’ve added to your Want In Trade list.

If you found to tool enjoyable or useful, please consider sharing it. Good luck tidying up your board game collection and go make some good trades!