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Was getting sick of reaching up and trying to grab random paints. Loving the neatness but after one paint session it will be wrecked again...

I'm quite ludicrously disorganized in general, but every now and again, I make these great feats of organizing, cleaning, or just straightening up my work area, and more often than now-and-again, I will completely ruin it; normally a lot faster than it took to organize it to begin with.

I'm now reorganizing the entire room, buying new equipment, a workbench, tables, rubbermaid drawers for bitz and odds and ends. Ambitious feat of organization indeed. I'm going to fight every urge to "just leave it there for now" and replace that rhetoric with "put it back where it belongs now".

Oh, self-discipline -- why must you be so easily avoidable?

Clean workspace? What is this? Some tricky Xenos plot? Or fell heresy?

I tidy up my workspace once a decade or so, weather it needs it or not.

Just to make anyone who feels like their workspace is just a bit untidy feel a whole lot better:

Brace yourself.....



It looks like the gods of mini wargaming took turns puking on a cheap Office Depot desk....

Cleaning on occasion and starting from an organised point, is one of the great perks of mini painting!

 hybridmoments82 wrote:
Just to make anyone who feels like their workspace is just a bit untidy feel a whole lot better:

Brace yourself.....

Spoiler:

It looks like the gods of mini wargaming took turns puking on a cheap Office Depot desk....

Good to know I'm not the only one! Though mine probably has another layer under all that of half-finished, barely started or 'ooh, I might paint that in a few years' projects!

Oh I need to do this so badly right now. My desk is covered in models and pots, and my boxes of sprues (normally neatly sorted) and all over the place. I need to do a full cleaning. Thanks for the motivation

I would say put a lazy susan in the shelf (two or three tiered) not to expensive for an okay one.

I'm on a two or three week cycle...I have to stop, clean up everything, throw out trash, carefully replace all of my paints in their racks etc. I can cope for a while, but then it's fix time.

I got one of these:

It may calm the madness of my bench just slightly.

Just got a large wheeled tool box on sale so I have reclaimed some work bench space that was encroaching into the hobby space.
I hate getting wood chips in my paint... unless I planned on it.

I still have not found a good way to store the paints that is easily organized and to see.
They are all sitting in a big long clear tote organized like a rainbow but one good hit to the side will undo all that.
The bench space is premium... more than 4 pots look both cluttered and risky.
Saw some good advice in Dakka: keep your "in process" paints in a Tupperware container to safeguard from tipping and paint going everywhere.
It is actually recoverable then.

Anyway... maybe a before and after shot for the great clean.

 Talizvar wrote:
I got one of these:

It may calm the madness of my bench just slightly.

Just got a large wheeled tool box on sale so I have reclaimed some work bench space that was encroaching into the hobby space.
I hate getting wood chips in my paint... unless I planned on it.

I still have not found a good way to store the paints that is easily organized and to see.
They are all sitting in a big long clear tote organized like a rainbow but one good hit to the side will undo all that.
The bench space is premium... more than 4 pots look both cluttered and risky.
Saw some good advice in Dakka: keep your "in process" paints in a Tupperware container to safeguard from tipping and paint going everywhere.
It is actually recoverable then.

Anyway... maybe a before and after shot for the great clean.

I bought a clear tiered nail polish rack off amazon for $20. It works great and holds about 60 pots so you can see them all.

I'm stealing the in process tupperware idea. I have wasted so many goddamn washes by knocking them over reaching for something.

 Paradigm wrote:
Good to know I'm not the only one! Though mine probably has another layer under all that of half-finished, barely started or 'ooh, I might paint that in a few years' projects!

LOL! In the posted pic, my "ooh I might paint this in a few years" project is mixed in there. Play a bit of Where's Waldo and see if you can find an FW Imperial Space Marine head/torso and legs on that table. Been DYING to get around to this, but the heavy mods I have planned, I need to clear my task list....

That imperial space marine is the shame of my ever-growing modelling task list....

 hybridmoments82 wrote:
Just to make anyone who feels like their workspace is just a bit untidy feel a whole lot better:

Brace yourself.....

Spoiler:

It looks like the gods of mini wargaming took turns puking on a cheap Office Depot desk....

That would drive me mental.

One of the slightly painful games I play is to look at pictures of my workspace and see what hasn’t been touched in the intervening time. Who’s still lurking at the back, waiting for paint? I’ve got guys who’ve been waiting primed multiple decades...

There is about 2 years between each of these pictures

I need to slap some paint on some of those guys, just to tidy up a bit.

No wonder long intervals happen: you were working on drop pods!
I am unsure if there is any other model I find more painful to assemble and paint.
You need to love yourself more, that chair looks brutal!
Umm.. these pictures were at different dates?
You always use the same cup and straw??
A good hobby desk anyway.

Much hate for drop pods. I think that thing plagued my paintbench for over a year.

Chair is well padded, just not the back. And I lean forward anyway, so it’s not an issue.

The cup/straw is my fresh water supply (as opposed to rinse water) I use the straw to drip out a drop onto my palette to thin my paints.

And yes, there is about a 4 year span covered there 2012-2016

 Nevelon wrote:
One of the slightly painful games I play is to look at pictures of my workspace and see what hasn’t been touched in the intervening time. Who’s still lurking at the back, waiting for paint? I’ve got guys who’ve been waiting primed multiple decades...

There is about 2 years between each of these pictures

Spoiler:

I need to slap some paint on some of those guys, just to tidy up a bit.

 hybridmoments82 wrote:
Just to make anyone who feels like their workspace is just a bit untidy feel a whole lot better:

Brace yourself.....

Spoiler:

It looks like the gods of mini wargaming took turns puking on a cheap Office Depot desk....

How do you two get anything done? I would have a breakdown trying to paint like that.

 Scott-S6 wrote:

That would drive me mental.

Spoiler:

I love your setup. May I ask where you got the lamps from? I have an old bendy green thing that I really need to replace since it gets way to hot for me to paint next to. And how does the acrylic shelving work for the paints? I would assume well, but I have been thinking of picking one up and have been concerned with how easy it would be to crack the acrylic attaching it to the wall. Do you have yours attached to a stand-alone back?

Also, how have you trained yourself to paint so neatly that you can have a monitor so close to your painting space? My phone is usually within arm's reach, and it has quite a few colorful spots on its otterbox case now (although they do rub off in a few months usually).

 Red_Ink_Cat wrote:

How do you two get anything done? I would have a breakdown trying to paint like that.

It’s easy, I just sit down, pick up a brush, grab a pot, and paint!

I also let dishes pile up by the sink, toss dirty laundry on the floor of my closet, and just get clean clothes unfolded from the laundry bin, rather then folding and putting them away.

I’m a slob. I’ve accepted that in myself. I do occasionally tidy things up, and am good at organization when I put my mind to it. I just don’t bother most of the time.

 Red_Ink_Cat wrote:

 Scott-S6 wrote:

That would drive me mental.

Spoiler:

I love your setup. May I ask where you got the lamps from? I have an old bendy green thing that I really need to replace since it gets way to hot for me to paint next to. And how does the acrylic shelving work for the paints? I would assume well, but I have been thinking of picking one up and have been concerned with how easy it would be to crack the acrylic attaching it to the wall. Do you have yours attached to a stand-alone back?

Also, how have you trained yourself to paint so neatly that you can have a monitor so close to your painting space? My phone is usually within arm's reach, and it has quite a few colorful spots on its otterbox case now (although they do rub off in a few months usually).

All three lamps are from Ikea but I don't think they do the skinny one anymore (which is a shame because it's occasionally useful even if daylight bulbs for it are really hard to find).

No acrylic in the paint rack - the back (black) section is wood and the shelves are aluminium.

I stopped worrying about paint spots around my painting area a long time ago, it's just one of those things. I only see spots from washes though, I'm fairly neat with everything else. Since that screen is purely for watching movies while painting I don't really care and they can usually be scraped off.

I need to re-hang that falcon blueprint though!

You guys have reminded me that I have to get more clear totes / containers.
Most of what causes being a slob is having no flat space to put things.
At least if I can stack the containers and still see what is in them, I am more likely to clean up. Nothing worse than "temporarily" setting something aside and "out of sight, out of mind" happens.
Like getting part way through a model kit build, I do not want to try to stuff it all back into the box, losing little bits along the way.
Sprues, box and all go into the container and glory-be the workspace is clear.
I also have a massive roll of bubble-wrap to line the boxes if I actually managed to start painting and did not have a free foam model carrier (helps them dry better anyway).

i finally started sorting my hobby area out and I've ony been doing it 6 months give or take and it was as bad as some of them horror pics

At least with the eye droppers, you can use this for storage. Even comes with free tea!

EDIT: Check the arts and crafts store for storage bins at a cheap price. Michael's storage bins are too short for the eye droppers, so might work for the GW pots.