Gorram's Side Quests

Like most places, it has been too hot here over the last few weeks for most painting. It has been great for getting a bunch of resin 3D printing done for a winter project but it hasn’t been very comfy to sit at the desk. I decided to carry out a big project that I’ve been putting off for a long time instead.

Organising the stash. SHUDDER IN FEAR!

I live in a pretty small flat but I am fortunate to have one good sized cupboard which is where the stash lives and an awkward space in the meter cupboard where I store some terrain. Between these two, everything hobby related fit but it wasn’t great. Nothing was going to fall on you if you opened the door buuuuut it was a pain in the hole to move everything to get something off a shelf towards the back, especially as I’m only 5’ 3” and have the reach of a common European hedgehog.

I still signed off work with stress so now seemed like the perfect time to actually do the work. Knowing that my flat was going to look like a hellscape for a couple of weeks, I started dragging boxes out of the main cupboard and piling them in the living room.

I’ve used Really Useful Boxes for years for storing armies, alternating between the 4L and 9L depending on the size of the army. The two boxes share the same footprint and size of lids so they stack very nicely together. Having a vague idea that I was going to undertake this tidy up a while ago, I’ve been buying up boxes every month usually four or six at a time.

85% of my miniatures are now neatly in the RUBS and clearly labelled. The things that aren’t are the ones that fit on the black bookcase (repurposed from elsewhere in the flat) or ones that I plan to keep in their boxes even after being painted (e.g. Walking Dead). There were projects that have moved into a pile to get rid/move on to someone else’s pile of shame. On the whole it makes finding things easier, picking out a project more enjoyable and has put in my head a couple of armies I’d like to get back to sooner rather than later. So far, so gravy.

The terrain was trickier to work through. I play a lot of games solo and I like well decorated tables. Unfortunately I have had to admit to myself I just don’t have the space for all the tables worth of terrain that I want to have. 

The pieces that get used across different tables (e.g. trees, walls, hedges, barrels and crates) have all been moved into 9L boxes to make grabbing them out of the cupboard easier.  My Hextech 10mm sci fi also got put into one of these with an XL lid.

The bigger boxes are 42L RUBs which happen to fit perfectly into the space. I can get seven in the cupboard so that is the hard cap on what tables I can have. There is stuff I have had to chuck and there is stuff that I’d like to replace for more flexible pieces in the future but for right now, this will do.

There is a box for Wild West, Normandy (28mm and 15mm in together), Frostgrave, Battlesystems cardboard fantasy city, Grim Dark sci fi (Imperial and Orky terrain), Clean sci fi for Star Wars/Infinity (28/32mm and Shatterpoint scale) and finally modern. There are some MDF kits that I am loath to get rid of but I just don’t know where I’ll store them if I build them… mostly this means my Gotham table is on an indefinite hiatus 🙁

It hasn’t been the most fun  hobby the last month but it has been very useful. Hopefully it’ll also act as a better reminder that I definitely don’t need any more models!!!