Like Gunpla? Click the image below to visit my new blog, Gunpla 101.
How have you been spending the new year? In my apartment, it’s been all about that New Year’s cleaning. But since John and I have a large collection of anime, manga, figures, and toys, it’s no less geeky than anything else we do all year!
I’ve written a bunch about building Gundams, but the real question is how to maintain them afterward. With all those tiny pieces, they’re serious dust magnets, so at the very least, we give them a blast of canned air at least twice a year.
This year, one of my biggest accomplishments was downsizing. Ever since our post-Otakon gunpla building binge, I’ve just had a stack of model kits sitting in the corner of my bedroom, not adding anything to my life. I’d been hesitant to toss them out, however, because they still contained vital additional gunpla parts in case mine broke.
It dawned on me, however, that I could save serious space by keeping the pieces in labeled plastic bags instead. So I grabbed some painter’s tape and my trusty Tamiya tool set for breaking up the sprues, and got organizing.
Now all my gunpla parts fit in just one box for easier storage. I decided to save the Gundam Destiny box since it’s the largest and has the nicest art on the cover.
When I shared my organizing trick on Tumblr, one of my followers suggested that if people don’t want to get rid of the box art, they can cut the boxes up for more efficient storage. But since I live in a tiny three-room apartment, that just isn’t for me!
Having geeky hobbies that take up this much space calls for some serious otaku creativity. How do you store your fandom collections?
Like Gunpla? Click the image below to visit my new blog, Gunpla 101.
4 Comments.
I’m about to sell my house and relocate, and so I’ve had to pack quite a bit of stuff of this nature. CDs and DVDs, for instance — I packed them by getting rid of the jewel boxes and Amaray cases, which most of the time are completely expendable anyway (you can always buy replacements). After I settle, I plan to keep them in binders.
I’m also finding that using Ziploc freezer bags works really well for little, fragile things like figurines — it creates an air cushion effect, so lots of small things can be stored in one box very effectively this way.
Aside from anime and a small selection of manga titles, my collecting (okay, hoarding, in this case) is all bits and bytes, image files. I have thousands and thousands of image files for various animes and sf/fantasy themed ones. These, thankfully, take up hard drive space rather than trapping me in my studio apartment.
I also have a lot of computer games, but I’ve been buying off of Steam for years so my collection sits in my library on their servers, rather than having game boxes stacked up here.
I like your organization trick with all the extra parts. Nice and smart. Plus you saved the best box and had a use for it. Can’t beat that.
Since a Master Grade Gundam X is available (FINALLY!), I’d love to see your work on that.
I have a PG strike gundam box that has about 15 years worth of gunpla box art in it. Not sure what I’m going to do with all of it thou.