It's no secret. I have a lot of hobbies. Some are more active than others, but this means I accumulate a lot of "stuff". I'm also a married father of 2 young daughters. This means my hobbies take a back seat to my family and other priorities from time to time. Add "stuff" to the equation and I get piles of stuff in my man cave. At times it gets so bad I can't get to certain things in my room, let alone find a place to sit down on my couch. This all leads to levels of frustration and stress that I don't need. Hobbies should make you happy, not stressed.
Enter a winter storm that brought levels of snow and ice the South hasn't seen in quite some time. These last few days I had the luxury of hanging out at home w/ my family since my work was closed. This lead to some quality free time being spent w/ my kids and my wife. It also meant I had some time to work on cleaning up my clutter in my man cave.
Next weekend I'll be hauling a good bit of my modern Transformers collection up w/ me to a fairgrounds just north of uptown Charlotte, NC. Since I'm a collector and not a dealer, I couldn't afford more than one 8 foot table to set up. I'm saying good bye to most of my Classics and Generations figures plus their Japanese equivalents of Henkei! and United. One wall in my man cave has track shelving installed that basically goes from the floor all the way up to the ceiling. Once I started pulling all of these toys off my shelves, it became easier to pull the plug on other toys. Before I knew it I had cleaned off two 72 foot shelves! I ended up grabbing most of my Botcon exclusive toys I had left along with a few 3rd party toys and some Web Diver toys I now no longer cared to keep. I actually have so much to sell now I'm not even sure it'll all fit on my 8 foot table next weekend!
So where am I going with this? Empty shelves. Gaping holes in my collection. I would spend the majority of the last few days taking everything off the shelves and moving them up or down according to how I was re-loading the shelf. Every Transformer I own has been picked up and moved in way or another. This has given me the chance to not only dust the toys, but also rekindle certain memories I have attached with specific toys.
Early yesterday afternoon, I finished just one part of my man cave reorganization project. The wall of shelving is now 99% complete. My G1 Transformers collection previously resided on these shelves, but I had little to no room to expand. I only lack 25-30 figures (or so) to have a complete G1 collection. Problem was if I had bought any of those missing figures, I had no room to work them in. After all I had Micromasters and Action Masters stacked on to of each other due to lack of space. That was before. Now, the G1 collection takes up approximately 4 and a half shelves. Everything is displayed in order of 1984-1991, by faction. Of course the Decepticons didn't receive as many releases so their shelves look much better. The Autobot shelves are still crowded in some areas, but the important thing is I have room for Hound, Jetfire, Whirl and a few others I lack.
I apologize I don't really have any pictures to share as I haven't gotten that far. I snapped a few cell phone photos and posted them on Facebook, but I plan to do a proper post w/ pictures once the entire project is completed.
I mentioned this was just phase 1. To the right of my wall shelving I have two large bookshelves. These too are totally being revamped. Some sections already have been as had to move a lot of things off the wall shelves. Once this part is done it'll be on to the final phase, phase 3.
Phase 3 will consist of revamping my entertainment center where my video game consoles reside. I'm working in an old CRT television for my older video game consoles so this means everything gets moved around. My light box where I take most of my pictures for this blog sits on a high table. Underneath it currently sits a lot of trading card binders. Did I mention I also collect baseball cards? Well those binders are going underneath the wall shelving on the other side of the room. But first I have to remove the comic boxes that are there now and trim down my comic collection. Some of the comic boxes may end up in the closet again, but at least I had previously cleaned the closet out when the idea first hit me of selling off a chunk of my Transformers.
When phase 3 completed, I'll have an additional television set up w/ video game consoles hooked up such as my Sega Genesis/CD, Sega Mark III, PC Engine, Turbografx-16, Nintendo Famicom and possibly my Super Nintendo. This will by default give me an additional cube in my entertainment center for small TF displays...thinking about sticking the few Alternity TFs in one of the spaces. I may even have space to bring out my Go-Bots / Converters / Transistor Robot toy collection once again!
When it's all said and done I think I'm going to be extremely happy. I'll be able to see and better appreciate the Transformers that are on display, while still giving me a little room to expand. I'll be able to sit on my couch again and enjoy a game of Borderlands 2 or Bioshock Infinite on my 360, or enjoy some retro gaming on my "new" old school TV. The biggest change I'm opening to get out of this is a sense of relaxing when I walk into my room, not stress. I'm still a month or two away from having this project completed, but once I'm done perhaps I'll do one of those corny YouTube room tours everyone does. We'll see.
