Stuff what I been painting

I have a pile of potential that is, like my waistline, only going in one direction – expanding. Like my waistline, I would like it to go in the other direction, so I need to take action. I’ve decided to publicly shame myself on the size of my pile of potential in the hope that this will push me toward reducing it. This is also where the comparison of my pile and my waistline stops – I’m not in any way advocating body shaming here! 🙂

I don’t have a permanent painting station but rather a wheeled painting set of drawers that hides, out of sight, under the stairs. Alongside this, are some boxes that contain unpainted models that are supposed to be painted next. This is just part of the pile of shame and there is more in the garage. But here are some pictures showing what I’m talking about

Now I expect that my pile is not as extensive as others, but it is too big for me. The obvious answer is to actually get a paint brush out and start painting but I decided to procrastinate some more and to catalogue my pile. In this way, I can track progress and see what’s outstanding and hopefully feel a bit more positive about get things completed.

To manage this, I created a spreadsheet because everyone loves a spreadsheet. In it, I have listed all of the models in the pile. By model, I have chosen to make this either an individual model (like a FoW tank) or a base (like a FoW infantry stand). This does create some disparity in the size of effort – for example, one of the entries is a High Elf riding a dragon, which counts as 1 model whereas a FoW German Infantry HQ (2 bases made up of 6 15mm men) counts as 2 models. But it’s start.

I’ve not finished cataloging all of the pile yet as it is buried away in places, this will happen over time so I expect the Pile number will grow, but I’m keen to focus on the Completed number. So, as I progress, I plan to update the spreadsheet and keep a tally of the numbers. Here is the state of play today.

As you can see, a current pile of 405 models. Nothing completed so far in 2023. But I do have 84 models in progress. By progress, I mean undercoated as a minimum. I don’t count models that are built otherwise (as you can see from the pictures above) this number would be much higher! The negative net gain shows that I have bought more models in 2023 than I have painted, which is akin to eating lots of cake and not going on a run (to return to the waistline analogy!)

I’m also hoping to add some nice graphs to my spreadsheet because that will also help get the models painted!

Feel free to drop in here and leave pile shaming comments in this project to spur me on to get the number down!