My Cheap-o Storage Solution

You know how sometimes when you're under stress because of a looming deadline or the arrival of a significantly life changing event, that you tend to become ... OCD? You start spring cleaning for no good reason, you re-arrange your furniture or you line up your books in alphabetical order. Well in my case, I became obsessive about storing the bits and tiny pieces of my boardgames... particularly the "17 trees worth of cardboard" (Uvulabob, 5:04) chits that comes in Le Havre...

And the mess it makes on the board...

(Pictures are courtesy of BGG users)

After salivating over all the various storage solutions of BGG users out there, I decided to go out onto the world wide web and see if any local Le Havre owners managed to find a solution for themselves and made some oblique mention about how they did it. I read about this place...


on some forum and that they stocked all manner of tupperwares. So I decided to drop by after work. Now before I left the house that morning, in my haste, I grabbed the nearest piece of paper in my wallet and held it against one of the supply spaces of Le Havre, and guess what? Its the exact same size as a Plus Highway toll receipt. There, bet you didn't know that... or wanted to know for that matter. Anyways, so if you pull the CCTV records of Daiso that evening, you would've seen a strange dude walking around the store, holding a toll receipt in his hand, stopping periodically to match it against a tupperware and shaking his head.

[Daiso is located on the 2nd Floor of The Curve next to a sporting goods store aL-Ikhsan]

Yup. No success there. I did manage to get teeny tiny seal-able bags for my other smaller bits though! 75 bags for RM5, that's 7 cents a bag... quite cheap-o oso yah?

Feeling somewhat dejected I posted an online shoutout asking if anyone else has a better solution. An fb friend who uses name card holders suggested the same but the ones I had seen so far, including the ones in Daiso, were slightly bigger than my Plus Highway toll receipt. The very next day, whilst walking to my car I walked past a shop I had passed more than a hundred times and I stopped. It sold all manner of kitchen appliances and cooking utensils. With nothing to lose, I popped in and took a look around.

And they had it! A nice plastic container with cover in colors! Mana tahu only got two left, one blue and one red. And as I recall Le Havre has eight supply spaces not including the francs spaces. It must have shown on my face because the Kakak there immediately offered to show me something of similar size at the back of the store. It turned out to be little plastic cups for jelly which they sell in bulk of 100 pieces. Somewhat skeptical I took out my trusted receipt (cue raised eyebrows of store kakak) and lo and behold! A near perfect fit! RM14 for 100 pieces, that's 14 cents a cup... oso very cheap-o I thought.

[The shop is called QD Shop, located in Pusat Bandar Damansara the shop after KFC heading towards McDonalds on the same row]

Happily I came home and gave my cheap-o storage solution a try and these are the results!

It fits for Dungeon Lords too :)

And here's how it looks on Le Havre

You notice the 80 or so jelly cups I have left in the background...

The leaning tower of resources

It fits in the box too!

And one for RFTG... I found one VP chip stuck to my elbow one day. It had been following me around the house for a day d.

All in all I have to say I'm quite happy with my cheap-o storage solution... Now I just need to play a full game with the bits to see if it works as good as I hope it will be. So all ye out there who are wondering, this is how I got my cheap-o storage solution!