Why does nobody talk about the cleanup after a game night?

Jana Roberts · 2026-04-19T23:40:08.226176+00:00

I was scrolling through this forum and saw a post about a huge 8 hour Catan session, which sounded awesome. But all the comments were about the strategy and the epic final turn, nobody mentioned the state of the living room afterwards. It made me think about our last game night, where we played Betrayal at House on the Hill. It was a blast, but when everyone left at 1 AM, I was staring at a sea of empty soda cans, a pizza box, and about a hundred little plastic pieces scattered on the rug. It took me a solid 45 minutes just to sort everything back into the box. Do you guys have a system for the post-game mess, or does one person always get stuck with it?

laurabennett2mo ago

Make the last person to leave help clean up... that's our rule. It works way better than you'd think.

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michael8955mo ago

Honestly, the only thing that saved us was making cleanup part of the game. Before the last round, we announce the "cleanup tax." Loser has to gather all the trash and stack dishes. Winner just has to put the game itself away. It gets the worst of it handled fast and makes losing a little less painful. Still end up with random cards under the couch, but it's a start.

2

brown.reese5mo ago

Wait, you got it all sorted in 45 minutes? After Betrayal? I'm calling that a win. That game has more tiny bits than a hardware store. Our last cleanup took two of us over an hour just to match the plastic sliders to the right character cards.

1