Parting Ways - Hobby Area Clean Up

Random - When it gets to be over 80 degrees outside, I tend to want to hide in the basement. It's cool and comfortable and I have plenty of projects to work on. (That's not to say I don't mind being outside I just prefer the temp to be in the 60-70 degree range with low humidity.)

My hobby area every so often becomes unusable. With the number of projects I have going at any given time things tend to pile up and consume the usable space I have. Most of the time I paint on a tray in the living room so I can hang out with the family while I work, but some projects need to spread out, are stinky or are better worked on in seclusion.

In an effort to make the space more functional I moved around the drawing boards and computer which made a huge mess. The area under the boards as well as on top of them, and the shelves I put up to organize things was cluttered with so much stuff I had to start pitching things.

I tend to collect things (no it's not hoarding) anticipating that I use them in a project or I'll find a good deal while working on a project and stock up on things I need. When the project is done or I move on to something else all that excess goes into a bin and gets put on a stack. Eventually the stacks take up all the available space and things start to get stacked on any flat area. (Sound familiar?) At that point finding or remembering what's in the bottom bins becomes difficult and occasionally I'll buy more of something I know I have but I can't find. The semi annual purge should help to solve that problem.

My other issue is I cast lots of things. With a mold sometimes you just need a single part but its nearly impossible to mix up the exact right amount of resin. The other thing is with resin you get lots of miscasts that can't be melted down, but you might be able to use them for something. That might be able to use for something eventually turns into boxes of random plastic/resin bits that are so full you can't find anything. Once again the semi-annual purge helps with that. Armed with a box of baggies I proceeded to go through every box of bits and sorted them out by type and threw out any miscasts or random bits that "might be useful" he process was painful but now I know what I have.

It took an entire Saturday just to move and sort out most of the junk but the end result is a more functional area. My next goal is to set up the airbrush station so I can focus on getting some of my terrain sets completed. Once I'm comfortable with painting terrain with the airbrush I plan on modifying my painting technique to include airbrushing. From what I've seen it can help to get the base colors down quick and do some basic highlights easily, so long as you're working in big batches and not having to break it down after each model.