The Little World

Is there a case for compartmentalizing your hobby? How about the rest of your life?

We are addicted to following other people’s good ideas, even when they turn bad. Think of the number of articles, sites, and experts who appear on television telling you to declutter your life. And you a scale modeller. You are fully entitled to roll your eyes until they clatter.

Scale modellers who build anything – or collect anything – or read about anything – are duty-bound by the rules of the art to clutter. It is not an aberration. If we do not clutter, we have no resources with which to work. Consider:

a. Every kit you buy is cluttered – as soon as you see a sprue tree, it has parts hanging off it – often extra parts or undefinable plastic lumps. Your mind is cluttered to begin with.

b. Ditto every Lego kit or other multi-part venture. Parts. Bits. Accessories.

c. Your workshop? Have you seen the number of tools on your wall, in the drawers, or in the toolbox? Bunnings will come to you when they run low. And every one of those tools will get used – some all the time, some once in a blue moon.

d. Stash.

e. Spare parts collection.

f. Dioramas are clutter on a small tray. Weathered clutter glued down with PVA. Expensive clutter, that you bought in a small packet at the hobby hell. The makers of the small accessories knew that by the time you were ready to buy them for a diorama, you were well and truly hooked…and have charged accordingly. There are no nickel bags for diorama accessories. Just pushers and buyers.

g. Exhibitions are cluttered as a matter of course and as a statement of art. The organisers start with good intentions and end up with a case of nerves.

So you can start your journey to hobby tranquillity by opening the workshop or hobby room window and flinging your copy of Marie Kondo out of it. One less dust magnet.