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I have a bit of a problem, Dakka.

I've decided that having my own backlog/ Mount Grey Plastic to be a bit of a hobby killer whenever I try to see what I don't need. There's a largish pile of minis that I was going to use but never did, minis for systems I'm not going to play (40k, Infinity, mordheim) in addition to having too many minis for small, random side projects. As it stands I've not enough time to pursue any of these other games while I'm currently playing Malifaux, with eyes on AoS and Bloodbowl (more so the latter, the former is a painting project with hopes of an eventual game). I'd have liked to have had all the time for these but just looking at the random piles of clutter is a demoralizing motivation killer.

What I need help with is how to sort, batch and otherwise de-clutter the pile of 'projects that never were to be' and how to organise hobby 'deep storage' for the minis I want to keep, but not necessarily use in the next 5-15 years.

Any advice would be appreciated along with tips on how to avoid getting back to this stage.

Thanks in advance,
Spin Cycle Dread

One big thing to do to de-clutter is cut everything off the sprue. Store them in ziplocks or bitz boxes. This will save a huge amount of space

You could sell off stuff. I keep meaning to do that myself, but never get around to it.

Set a goal to work on it. Paint a mini a week for a year, and you have 52 things off the pile of shame. That’s a reasonably sized army and an achievable goal. Slow but steady wins the race. Don’t be intimidated by the pile, chip away at it.

Stop buying stuff. There will always be shiny stuff you covet. Stop feeding the pile. Or at least strive to paint/sell more then you buy.

I just keep buying but never assembling. My mind keeps scattering on new projects and nothing ever gets done.

Plastic crack is right. Now I know how my wife is with shoes. Keeps buying shoes even though she will never wear them or wear them once.

Batch paint. Batch Base.

Start 1 project and work until completion.

Accept that there will be levels of quality you expect from your painting . Lets say 3... TableTop quality, Tabletop Centerpiece, and Show piece...

Use tools that make painting and assembling more rapid. Better tools. Better airbrush. Nicer paints. Organized work area. If you keep buying minis but have gakky tools... think about which will motivate you more. A $20 RedSable 000 brush and a $100 New Airbrush or a new $120 model to add to Mt Gray Plastic.

Consider dipping.

Devoted, uninterrupted time.

Consider a book on tape/audible. For example, Ive been listening to The History of the American Civil War by Shelby Foote while painting my ACW historicals. Consider a great classic that you can download for free. Youll feel like youre getting two thing done at once. For instance, your painting Napoleanics...Have you read War and Peace, A Tale of Two Cities, Les Miserables, etc.? SciFi painting or preference Classics like Assimov, Bradbury, Herbert, Leguin. Fantasy? Tolkein , Brooks, etc... prefer non fiction? Try historical biographies or Guns Germs and Steel... Pulitzer winners. whatever

Sell your unused pile at 75% discount. Get rid of that paralyzing clutter.

Watching TV, youtube or playing video games might be an issue too. Give em up... or not

Hide the unbuilt stuff. Only have the models you're currently working on on your painting table. That way, it doesn't look so overwhelming.

What I did and felt better:
Get enormous clear tote.
Label outside with game system and/or army name.
Put WIP items (assembled, painted, primed) in small containers like shoe boxes with a liner or bubble wrap to protect from damage.
Put ALL decals in a well sealed Ziploc bag and put into one of the shoe boxes.
Put all instructions and assembly guides into plastic sealed bag.
Put all trimmed off parts or on sprue into bags.
Include painting notes and test strips in a bag so you can match previous work.

Throw a cheap notepad of paper in and catalogue what kits are there and what you take out (done) with date so you can see what madness you were up to for that army and when (5 years??! Untouched? Could not be that long!)

It is organized and looks awesome rather than clutter.
You can also easily sell the whole thing for more money if sick of that game / army. (I did).

It works and makes my area look good rather than a mad manchild toymaker.

-

Thanks for the advice so far guys, probably going to sell the excess in the new year- the motivation could sure do with knowing that all the things I'm not going to use are removed and allows for a smaller collection. Might make a pledge and hand write an actual budget to curb unnecessary hobby splurges. I feel very much like Davor, there's a particular new shiny and I must have it.

Will consider getting audiobooks for painting, or failing that, listen to podcasts (could always use the tactical advice ) And get some ziplock bags to remove the sprues on some projects.

My challenge with my backlog is I'm a bit of a packrat. I'm loathe to get rid of something, even if I've had it sitting around for years and am reasonably confident that I'll never paint or play it. I have a large pile of Rivet Wars and Myth (1.0) that I got as part of the Kickstarters. They're still sitting, unpainted, in boxes, never played. I did manage to read through the rules once.

So I say, okay, this isn't happening. I may as well get rid of the things.

Then I get the pit in my stomach. What if? No, I have to keep it.

Hell, even writing about this makes me uncomfortable. So everything still stays stacked neatly in the basement and I just wait for the whole thing to flood.

 AndrewGPaul wrote:
Hide the unbuilt stuff. Only have the models you're currently working on on your painting table. That way, it doesn't look so overwhelming.

This is the best advice I can get. Eat that elephant one bite at a time.

I packed everything away in plastic boxes.

I made the decision to have landmarks where I'm not going to buy a new thing until I finish X in my existing things.

eg.

1. I'm not going to buy anything for an existing army until I have painted at least half of my currently unpainted stuff for that army.

2. I'm not going to buy a new army for a system I already have another army in until I finish one of my existing armies for that system.

3. I'm not going to buy a new boxed set for a new game until I finish the one I'm currently working on (in this case, I'm still working on Space Hulk ).

Have a massive clear out and sell off, keeping only the stuff that you are working on. Don't leave things there stressing you out. This video is a great example of what I'm talking about

EVENTS.

Nothing gets me completing things better than a good event. Book an event in a month. Figure it a list featuring lots of things you want to get off the desk. It's a great way to give yourself some motivation!

As mentioned before, I'd also invest in some good equipment to make painting faster. I used to paint by priming, brush painting colours, brush painting details, washing everything, then brush painting highlights and bases. Realising I didn't have as much hobby time, about two years ago I made an effort to switch to faster techniques and bought an airbrush and various weathering fluids and oil paints.

Now, I paint by priming, airbrushing all the highlights and airbrushing/masking big secondary colours, brush painting details, sponge weathering and oil washing. Not only did it massively speed up painting (and break up the monotony of brush painting), all those steps favour doing large batches of models. I could get 30-50 models a week up to tabletop standard this way.

I won't play with stuff until it is painted.

Not just assembled and undercoated.

I also don't buy a lot of stuff (infinity is my main game, and that's like a box or so every 2 to 3 months) and my other game, KoW just uses my already finished elf army from WHFB.

The bulk stuff (WHFB) was batch painted. 10 at a time. All the fabric, all the armour, all the weapons, all the skin. Do one, pick up the next, continue.

To a lesser extent, the infinity stuff is done likewise. All stuff for a given unit type has the same scheme.

 chromedog wrote:
I won't play with stuff until it is painted...

I did the same thing but it just led me to not playing a game for about 3 years straight while I was getting an army together

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 chromedog wrote:
I won't play with stuff until it is painted...

I did the same thing but it just led me to not playing a game for about 3 years straight while I was getting an army together

It works a lot better when you already have a solid core for an army.

I only play WYSWYG painted for my Ultras. But for them, I’ve had most of a battle company painted up since around 5th edition, and polished it up with better options a few years ago. So the play it painted works very well as a motivator. I want to put honor guard in my land raider? Need to get them off the bench. From a tactical POV, I could just use another unit I already have. But the desire to field a unit is a strong motivator to get it painted. It’s the only reason my 3rd drop pod got done. So much hate for those things on the bench, but so much love on the table. Reading the fluff on a unit, and envisioning all the things it can do on the battlefield helps a lot with motivation.

For my Eldar, I wasn’t quite starting from scratch when I rebooted them back in 6th. I had a fistful of guardians, two falcons and some HQs. Plus some odds and ends that wound’t make legal squads these days. So when my FLGS started an escalation league, I had to put some unpainted stuff down. I just don’t paint that fast. I strived to get more done each week, but the league was long over by the time I could field a decent sized army fully painted. If I had waited to field everything painted, it never would have happened.

Playing games also helps me work out what gets painted next. Find that your lists need more AV firepower? Time to paint some melta guys.

I’m not going to say I love all parts of the hobby equally, but I do enjoy them all. (except cleaning mold lines, that can go die in a fire). But I find that painting and playing go hand in hand, and that they reinforce each other. The battlefield drives what I want to paint, and I try to get as much fresh paint into my lists as I can, to baptize them in fire and see what they can accomplish.

I think the best advice is get everything in your queue out of site and off desk. Do 1 project till your satisfied, then get your next project.

It's a hobby. You'll always be working at it. Seeing all the stuff you need to do can be overwhelming.

Get everything in an army basecoated and ink washed.

Leave highlights and details for a later date.

This is the way to make progress fast, and to be able to call things painted, while realizing that you have the opportunity to go back and improve the paintjob at a later date if you want to.

Reducing time spent per mini is extremely important. I have done 15 minutes a figure and been reasonably satisfied with the end result as a tabletop-ready piece. It feels great to have 10 minis done in a single quick painting session.

Nothing more than coloured spraybase , 2 other colours and washes, and some very quick basing, but does the job rather nicely with room to come back to it later and improve it if I have time

Other major tip is - Remove mould lines while watching TV. Use a file not a knife though since you'll be distracted. It takes me about 10-15 minutes a figure just to get mould lines off so this is essential.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 chromedog wrote:
I won't play with stuff until it is painted...

I did the same thing but it just led me to not playing a game for about 3 years straight while I was getting an army together

I just played smaller games.
With 40k - you can play kill team at small points. It's one unit for the most part, from what I understand.

Otherwise, it still took me about a year to get that first force painted. Buy unit, assemble and paint (and DO NOT BUY MORE until this step is done).
You have to establish a working method first. Do that and it all falls into place like jenga ...

 SpinCycleDreadnought wrote:
I have a bit of a problem, Dakka.

I've decided that having my own backlog/ Mount Grey Plastic to be a bit of a hobby killer whenever I try to see what I don't need. There's a largish pile of minis that I was going to use but never did, minis for systems I'm not going to play (40k, Infinity, mordheim) in addition to having too many minis for small, random side projects. As it stands I've not enough time to pursue any of these other games while I'm currently playing Malifaux, with eyes on AoS and Bloodbowl (more so the latter, the former is a painting project with hopes of an eventual game). I'd have liked to have had all the time for these but just looking at the random piles of clutter is a demoralizing motivation killer.

What I need help with is how to sort, batch and otherwise de-clutter the pile of 'projects that never were to be' and how to organise hobby 'deep storage' for the minis I want to keep, but not necessarily use in the next 5-15 years.

Any advice would be appreciated along with tips on how to avoid getting back to this stage.

Thanks in advance,
Spin Cycle Dread

K.I.S.S.

Clean off your table. write a list of 10 projects. Use your time to focus on 1 project allotted per day, week, or month. Depends on you. NO MORE THEN 3 PROJECTS.

Put everything else away, until you plan it out of what you want to accomplish. Keep the area clean.

Modeling, painting, and gaming stuff in one area. Then follow through with your projects.

You see results in three days or less.

Guys, I appreciate the feedback but I'm after advice that leans towards not hoarding, how to determine what I want to keep and so on rather than ploughing through a project. I just plain don't have enough time to paint through and play everything. Really want to declutter, downsize and not OOH SHINY!!! impulse purchase on minis/projects that's lead to this happening. Gotta minimise the mountain rather than turn Mount Grey Plastic into Mount Painted Plastic. The video link Zedmeister linked is exactly how I feel ^^;

Currently have sitting around to...sit around:

40k: Space marines and some chaos
Infinity: Pan-O, Nomads, N3 rulebook and 2nd edition artbook
Mordheim: Witch hunters, Sisters of Sigmar, Amazons
WHFB: Huge chaos army
AoS: Some of the above chaos
Random minis from multiple ranges.

And that's just off the top of my head

Given that it's almost the Christmas season it's probably not the best time to try and clear stuff out, but I'm leaning towards a huge clean out in the near future or check out the dakka swap page. Something anyhow.

Hello: I am a wargaming hoarder, I have well over 1,000 minis I need to still assemble and paint, not too mention i'm also starting on a new dark Angel's chapter working one company at a time, along with my own custom Chapter and an IG army and an Ork army and a Tyranid army, and like with my DA won't start painting till I have a full company to assemble and paint, right now only 7 Rhino's 3 Dreadnoughts and 1 10 man assault squads and 9 drop pods till my 3rd. Company is complete and ready to assemble and paint, so yes I am a wargaming hoarder.

 SpinCycleDreadnought wrote:
Guys, I appreciate the feedback but I'm after advice that leans towards not hoarding, how to determine what I want to keep and so on rather than ploughing through a project. I just plain don't have enough time to paint through and play everything. Really want to declutter, downsize and not OOH SHINY!!! impulse purchase on minis/projects that's lead to this happening. Gotta minimise the mountain rather than turn Mount Grey Plastic into Mount Painted Plastic. The video link Zedmeister linked is exactly how I feel ^^;

Currently have sitting around to...sit around:

40k: Space marines and some chaos
Infinity: Pan-O, Nomads, N3 rulebook and 2nd edition artbook
Mordheim: Witch hunters, Sisters of Sigmar, Amazons
WHFB: Huge chaos army
AoS: Some of the above chaos
Random minis from multiple ranges.

And that's just off the top of my head

Given that it's almost the Christmas season it's probably not the best time to try and clear stuff out, but I'm leaning towards a huge clean out in the near future or check out the dakka swap page. Something anyhow.

Do it! Sell! Sell! Sell! I started clearing out about 1 and half years ago and it feels very cathartic. Plus you get a nice pile of cash to stick into savings. What I did was first to take a good long hard look at what I had and make an inventory of sorts. I did this alongside a wishlist of what I'd like to get in future - this is where you attempt to curb the impulse purchases. When you have a wishlist of what you'd like to purchase along with a cost to buy it all, plus the project plan (see below), it becomes easier to put off purchases as you have to justify the spend (if I buy new shiny, well that meddles with my planned purchase of x for next months project). I was able to resist most of the box games this year. Prospero, Calth and Blood Bowl made it through, but those fit into my existing plans. This planning and decision phase is undoubtedly the hardest part as you will start to have all these grandiose ideas returning in your head and, even worse, tangs of nostalgia. You need to be brutal and think "I am currently painting X a year. At the current rate, it'll be x years before I start those and that's before anything new arrives." Once you start to realise when, if ever, you'll get around to painting them it becomes easier to part ways and start listing them for sale. I eased it along by actually making a project list for the next 1-2 years divided into 3-6 month blocks. So, I was working on 30k Alpha Legion for the first half of this year and my Sons of Medusa for the second half. I will most likely build up my Blood Bowl team in Jan and then switch to doing my Darklands armies starting in Feb until April where, depending on the release of Adeptus Titanicus, I may switch over to either it, continue with Blood Bowl or Darklands until July when the next project block hits and I switch over to the next in the queue.

So far, I have sold off the following, with exceptions made for finished painted pieces, which will never be sold off. You have to remember most of these were sat in boxes, unassembled, unloved and uncared for:

- All my Dropzone Commander items, including a huge Resistance army and a small UCM force
- A massive chunk of my Sedition Wars bits, keeping some of my more favourite pieces
- My entire Kingdom Death collection bar two models!
- My Death Korps army
- My Eldar Corsairs army
- My entire Man O'War collection
- A reduction in my colossal Epic collection (still ongoing)
- Space Hulk 2nd and 3rd Edition
- Rogue Trader Orks army
- Reduction of my Elysian Drop Troops to Killteam size
- Reduction of some of my Darklands collection (bits I've accumalated that I have no intention of painting)
- Various small collections of Warhammer Fantasy from late 80's and early 90's

What my current project list looks like for the next few years:

- 2016: Sons of Medusa
- 2017: Darklands Jutes/Atalantes/Fomoraic
- 2017: Adeptus Titanicus/Blood Bowl
- 2017: 30k Alpha Legion
- 2018: Mechanicum/Adeptus Mechanicus

Unplanned projects:
- Classic Warhammer Quest
- Rogue Trader Guard
- Classic Epic (1st/2nd Edition)
- 30k White Scars
- Terrain

Considering what I started with, I have reduced the amount of space taken up by half.

 SpinCycleDreadnought wrote:
Any advice would be appreciated along with tips on how to avoid getting back to this stage.

I know this probably won't be helpful but recently I have been digging miniatures out of boxes where they have lived for 20 years or so and giving them a lick of paint as I find new uses for them. There are other miniatures I parted with over the years that I now regret but I would be the first to admit I am a hoarder.

In recent years I have managed to dramatically reduce the build-up of unpainted miniatures by taking the wargamers pledge - I have pledged (to myself) to buy fewer miniatures than I paint each year. Not only has this cut down on my purchases but it has also spurred me on to paint up more of what I have.

I echo the selling; go through your collection and critically think "Will I ever finish this?" If it's not a resounding yes, then sell it off. Use some of the money to go towards projects you will finish, paints, beer, whatever.

You can cut it down a bit, by starting with the new in box / on sprue stuff, then the build but unpainted stuff, then the part painted stuff.

Set yourself some goals regarding volume / space - my aim is to fit everything into a single bookcase.

Hard work and discipline is the only way to beat the unpainted pile. There really is no other way.

What helps me not buy something, is to sit down and visualize completing the project.

Buying it. Taking it home. Taking it out of the box. Deciding which options I want to use. Clipping the parts. Cleaning the parts. Building the model. Priming. Base coat. Details. Highlights. Doing the base. Painting the base. Top coating everything. Storing it.

Usually I get a huge pit in my stomach by the time I hit the end of this list. Occasionally that's enough to make me stop buying it. If that's not enough, think about doing all of that for everything you already own. Typically I'm wishing for my house to catch on fire by this point. It certainly isn't a perfect system (I still buy more than I complete), but it *has* prevented purchases.

One other thing is... don't back 'Pile-o-Plastic' Kickstarters. I've backed some games that started out as 40 miniatures, and then dropped my pledge when they hit 100... there's no way I'm going to get all of that painted. Generally, if it's going to produce more than a couple dozen models... the quality isn't going to be super high (there are exceptions of course), so why spend my money on something mediocre?

Only keep one project "on deck" at a time. I try to keep only one unit I'm actively painting my painting table at any given moment, although right now there's a few models from different ranges and projects that are cluttering it up a little. When you can look at your work space and see one squad or one character model and you can visualize what it'll look like done, that'll motivate you a lot more than a daunting mountain of models. Keep what you're not working on out of sight and out of mind.

Selling off unused projects might not be a terrible idea either, but that's up to you, your storage situation, and your financial situation to decide whether or not that's viable. I've sold off a few armies over the years (usually mostly unbuilt armies) because I could never see myself returning to them. I've been very careful about what armies I've sold off though.

I usually have two projects going at once. One I work on, then set aside to dry and pick up the other. I can get a a lot done in a short amount of time.

I also make sure everything can be packed away and stored somewhere. I don't have a painting table, as it is also my gaming table. All models have to be able to be pulled out, and put away again in one sitting.

For backlog, everything has a place. Then, I order it based on preference to finish.

 Easy E wrote:
I usually have two projects going at once. One I work on, then set aside to dry and pick up the other. I can get a a lot done in a short amount of time.

I also make sure everything can be packed away and stored somewhere. I don't have a painting table, as it is also my gaming table. All models have to be able to be pulled out, and put away again in one sitting.

For backlog, everything has a place. Then, I order it based on preference to finish.

I paint at my desk, this way I do not have a clutter of stuff piling up (for long).