Culling The Pile…

[pagan8thParticipant 10744xp 2]

I have too many games gathering dust. They seemed like a good idea when I bought them, or backed them on kickstarter, but now they just sit there… staring at me in their half painted, or untouched state wasting space.

It’s time to be ruthless… go through the boxes… scavenge anyhting I might use and junk the rest.

I know I could put them on ebay and make some money back, but I’d probably just buy more crap with the proceeds.

The hard part is getting started… admitting that I wasted hundreds… thousands… of  pounds over the years on things I wanted, but didn’t need… or wanted and turned out to be a pile of kickstarter crap like so many games by the like of cmon and new publishers that sold games with what amounted to playtest rules that they updated for a stupid amount of money (I’m looking at you Endure the Stars, Mythic Battles and pretty much anything by cmon).

Not sure if I’ll get the courage to trash those games… but I hope so.

If you’re wondering why now… I’m 59 tomorrow and the house feels so cluttered… it’s needs a cull.

[warzanKeymaster 30960xp 1]

Ohh I have been feeling this exact thing over the last weeks!

It was exacerbated by a conversation with Andrea, when I was telling her my Mums family had 8 children and 2 parents living in a 3 bed council house almost exactly the size of our little house in Castlerock where during the pandemic we wondered how on earth we’d ever manage to live there when Savanna and the 3 boys would get to their teens. So we moved to the arse end of nowhere into this big old place.

Now don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love it here and have enjoyed every moment of working on it and fixing it up, and with the way the world is headed this may end up being one of those old timey multigenerational homes if our kids struggle to get housing.

But with all the additional space we have grandually been unpacking all the crap Ive gathered up over the years, and yes Ive added some crap since we got here too.

But Andrea couldn’t believe that 10 people all lived in the one little house so I phoned my mum to ask if there was a point where they were all in there or did marriages etc mean there was never a full house. Turns out nope, they all lived there all the boys in one room, the girls in another and one room for the parents.

Then she said somthing that hit me like a bag of bricks, “Warren, remember folks really didn’t have anything, not like today where you have stuff all over the place, we didn’t have a lot of clothes and bed rooms were just for sleeping in, we basically lived out side”

My own childhood was not dissimilar although already by that stage I had more ‘stuff’ than my parents ever had (my fathers household was 9 people)

And then I thought about all the stuff I have accumulated and just had this awful sense of dread and almost feeling like I was drowning in it. I thought, if I pop my cloggs tomorrow, what on earth would andrea and the kids even do with it all, some has value but only to the right people and they are unlikely to be ever able to manage working that out.

So we have been thinking along similar lines.

We have an old cottage just behind the house here that I was planning on turning into little music rooms, but now we are gonna demolish it. There is already a godly amount of space here, and more of it will just compound the problem.

So I feel you mate, I don’t have any answers, but Im interested to see what other folk are feeling on this! 🙂

Thanks for sharing!

[sundancer 42900xp 0]

Not sure if I’ll get the courage to trash those games… but I hope so.

You can do it! Getting to terms with it and opening up is the biggest step. If you don’t want to go through your stuf by yourself maybe just pack it up and donate it to a local club or something and they can harvest what they want and recycle the rest.

Having more space is nice. Keeping “more space” free is hard. We tend to collect way to much stuff in our hobby. (At that point not having money and space in the first place almost feels like a benefit.)

Keep at it. You can do it. 🙂

[pagan8thParticipant 10744xp 2]

It’s not just games. There are books, dvd’s… heirlooms… it all takes up space… and there’s that blood furniture and beds too…

@warzan my mother was one of 11 children that lived in a small terraced house. One of my aunts one of 17 children. You’re right about people having nothing, especially when they were growing up between the two world wars. I didn’t have much as a kid, but it was a lot compared to my parents and I didn’t have to wear ‘hand me down clothes’. The world is crazy and wasteful today… constant barrage of adverts to sell us the latest TV, or phone and peer pressure to have the latest technology.

In my job as postman I see new houses being built  and they’re often only small, but when I glance inside those unoccupied buildings they look so spacious… because they are empty.

Those of us that work hard deserve to treat ourselves from time to time, but out hobby is flat packed for the most part. One box of miniatures seems so small when you buy it, but by the time you’ve built the figures and terrain I takes up so much space.

[sundancer 42900xp 0]

Yeah the exploding flatpack. Especially noticeable when you buy something mad from MDF. :S

[bubbles15Participant 2308xp 1]

It was moving that did it for me. After unpacking the nth box (I think I had about 12 big boxes of models –  I found new Imperial Guard I hadn’t built. I gave away a foot high stack of Codices I’d moved in. I’ve still 10th edition box models to build because I’d bought two bloomin’ boxes and yeah, I also think of the cost, what if that’d gone into overpayments and what not but there’s also life to live.

I came late to the magnetising models party so had everything wrapped in bubblewrap and now… it’s no spend unless I really want it. It’s not denial, just an acknowledgement that I’ve got enough. The real killer was working out the cost of Really useful boxes to pack everything away for another possible move!

[ced1106Participant 6224xp 0]

Happy Birthday!

Just had mine a few days ago. Picked up two more games, of course.

What I’ve been doing is playing a solo miniatures game, and painting the miniatures for it. Gets some focus to the paint queue, and I’m playing.

As for KS, I haven’t missed backing non-miniature laden boardgames. I’m avoiding pre-assembled soft plastic b/c I have plenty of generic fantasy.

Doesn’t solve everything, of course, and easier said than done. Good luck!

[blinky465 17027xp 0]

I gave away a load of minis after covid. It was really, really cathartic. But my wife says I’ve long had a rather unusual relationship with the whole concept of “ownership”. See, I don’t actually understand ownership.
To me, we never actually own anything – it’s all just stuff that’s in our custody for a while.

That house you “own”? You didn’t build it, did you? Someone else owned it before you. Someone else will own it after you’re gone. It’s not a “forever thing”. Just something you have custody of for a while. Who still has their first car? Nope? What happened to it? I’ve no idea what happened to mine. But someone owned it before me, possibly a few people did. Then. I had it for a while, and now it’s gone.

I see pretty much all my possessions like this.
When I’ve helped clear out relative’s belongings, a lot of it gets given away (to charity or friends). Some of it gets mercilessly chucked out. When I’m gone, I’m pretty ok with my loved ones doing exactly that too – don’t hang onto the crap I’ve collected, just because I had possession of it for a while! Let it go. It was me that enjoyed holding onto it for a bit, not you.

I do the same with my own possessions every now and again.
When they no longer give me joy or comfort – I get rid of them.
My wife thinks I’m crazy. But then again, she benefitted when we first got together and I gave her my house (actually, sometimes just giving stuff away (without being dead first) comes with legal obligations – but the principle is the same).

But even beyond this existential crisis of ownership, getting rid of minis is also great for your mental wellbeing.
I had a massive pile of potential for years. Sometimes it would nag at me, that it wasn’t finished (let’s be honest, not even started). But what nagged even more what the time, at some point in the future, I’d have to commit to getting it done. To get from “I’m so sad this pile of grey is still grey” to “I’m relieved this pile of grey is no longer grey” would require more time than I wanted to commit to it – and even the idea of committing all that time to getting it done, when future-me could be doing something else, that would make me sad too! Now-me was committing future-me to stuff now-me couldn’t be bothered doing. Why would future-me want to do it? Future-me would have no time to do cool and groovy stuff, just because now-me was a jerk.

So getting rid of your unpainted minis not only clears space on your shelf, it clears space in your mind. And it gets you a whole load of your life back, that you can spend doing other, cooler things.

And if you get rid of some minis and then decide it was a massive mistake and you need to get them back?
Remember the buzz you got when you first acquired those minis?
You get to have that again too, when you buy them for a second time!

Get rid of your unpainted minis.
It’s win-win-win!

[sundancer 42900xp 0]

By that logic I do own my C64 because I was the first who owned it. And some other things as well. But I get your point.

As always people do tend to react to things differently. Yes I have some P.o.O. and a part of it is nagging me. But most is there to comfort me because I wanted it and now I own it.

And lets not forget: Buying minis again can be a PITA and next to impossible in some cases. Some things are lost forever to you on occasion. Either because no one sells them or they are way out of your price league.

So I might rephrase that to “get rid of stuff that only nags you and isn’t something like a limited run.” Sell, give away or bin it.

[blinky465 17027xp 0]

But I get your point

I fear, maybe not. That you no longer have your C64 means you don’t own it. And when you did, what did “owning it” mean? My point is that even when you think you “own” something, you’re really only a custodian for it, for a short while.

Same goes for everything. Including minis. So don’t be afraid to let them go. If you’ve had them for a while, you don’t have to keep them forever.

[sundancer 42900xp 0]

I fear you didn’t get me: I still have my C64. It’s in its original box in the garage. So I do own it. And only if I pass it on I will have been a custodian. If I choose to put it through the shredder I will have been it’s only owner.

But that’s all besides the point that we shouldn’t cling to much on physical items if they are more a burden then a joy. I think.

[pagan8thParticipant 10744xp 0]

At some point in time either the C64 will cease to exist, or you will… that endeth the ownership…

This forum column is getting way to philosophical…

@sundancer… add ‘No philosophy’ to the list that includes ‘No religion’ and ‘No politics’… 🙂

[blinky465 17027xp 0]

Aha. Yep. If you still have the C64, then indeed, you own the thing. For now. And one day you won’t (for whatever reason). And it seems that you did indeed  see the point and it is I who missed it!

And when you do put your C64 through the shredder (because, let’s be honest, you wouldn’t want to burden anyone else with being its custodian – it’s not a ZX Spectrum after all, but that’s for another discussion) I’m presuming you’ll throw the pieces out rather than keep them in a box on your shelf. So you’ll no longer “own” it – and the ownership lasted only as long as it was in your possession.

Which is what I was clumsily trying to describe originally – keeping hold of something “because it’s mine” is a circular argument. Because it’s only “yours” for as long as you keep hold of it.

TLDR: Letting stuff go is good for you. Go on, Elsa, let it go 😉

No religion.
No politics.
No philosophy.
No C64/Spectrum culture wars.

[sundancer 42900xp 0]

I’m just saying: I still have my C64. Do you still have your specky? No? Win for the C64. Don’t @ me!

Let’s build a snowman!

[blinky465 17027xp 0]

I think you’ve just blown my entire theory out of the water.
I have *a* Spectrum.
I bought it off ebay a few years back.

It’s never felt like “mine” though.
“Mine” was a rubber-keyed monstrosity a dented metal cover and a loose power cable that caused it to reset randomly (even though it too was bought second-hand in the 80s, that was “mine”). This is someone else’s, that I just happen to have in my possession right now.

Snowman? Is a “slushman” a thing?
It’s done nothing but rain here for days and days.

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