Spring Cleaning 2023 - The Box Of Doom

Somehow it is that time of year again. The Spring Clean Challenge. I usually spend the weeks leading up to the challenge going through old projects and figuring out which ones are still exciting enough to me that I will be motivated to complete but also do-able in the three months alongside other projects. This year I had narrowed it down to two and was fairly sure that one of them was “the right one”. To make sure I knew what I was getting myself into, I dove into the stash and started to find the various parts of it.

This, dear readers, is where our story takes its first twist.

You see there was a box.

I moved this box four times while digging through the stash and every time had the fleeting thought of “oh it’s *that* box again”.

This box has a presence you see. It looms.

This box is the box where tiny fighting folk go to die. Or sleep for a very long time. Or something like that.

This is the box where I exile all the models that I started when the shiny was new; built them, cleaned them, primed them, base coated even. Then something else came in and they got moved off the painting handles but were still at the front of the table. Then, inexorably they drifted to the back of the table. At some point, in the chaotic energy of a spree cleaning, they get put into the box to come back to later.

You see where this is going, right?

There is no later.

Until now.

This won’t be an overly impressive project. It won’t be a city modelled with an epic set of photos. It will be what I need a spring cleaning project to be though; a way to dust off models that I like but haven’t treated kindly and get them painted up.

I haven’t done a stock take of the box yet. The top has a lot of GW minis as I was magnetising bases months ago. Under it there are multiple Blood Bowl teams. Test models for several other projects, character models for MESBG, and random units for armies.

There are dozens and dozens of them. Can I get them all painted in three months? Bugger only knows, but I’ll manage to get more painted than I have so far and that seems like the embodiment of spring cleaning to me!

I moved this box four times while digging through the stash and every time had the fleeting thought of “oh it’s *that* box again”.

This box has a presence you see. It looms.

This box is the box where tiny fighting folk go to die. Or sleep for a very long time. Or something like that.

This is the box where I exile all the models that I started when the shiny was new; built them, cleaned them, primed them, base coated even. Then something else came in and they got moved off the painting handles but were still at the front of the table. Then, inexorably they drifted to the back of the table. At some point, in the chaotic energy of a spree cleaning, they get put into the box to come back to later.

You see where this is going, right?

There is no later.

Until now.