The first step to solving the problem is admitting you have one.........

 I wasn't sure if I should make this post or not.  I took these pics over a week ago and was going to do this post at that time but then I decided against it.  Now I have changed my mined again.  A few weeks ago I decided that I seriously needed to re-organize my game stuff and purge some of the crap I have collected over the years.  I do this fairly often with varied amounts of success.  I have not done this since my last move and things are getting very out of hand.

 I have been collecting miniatures for about 28 years now.  I started when I was 10 or 11 and I still have some of my "first" miniatures.  My wife started the hobby when we started dating 19 years ago so for almost 20 years both of us have been buying miniatures and collecting other hobby related things.  Our daughter is 17 and even though she is not at into miniature gaming as my wife and I are she does game and has acquired a fair amount of gaming stuff herself.  

Two adults and one almost adult can sure collect a lot of gaming stuff.  Like I said we have purged and re-organized several times in the past but our collection is still huge.  Thousands of miniatures.  Hundreds of game books and all the supplies needed to do the "hobby".
 
We are also very adept at building our own terrain out of both traditional materials and random junk as anyone who follows this blog is aware.  That makes for a massive collection.  Our half finished and abandoned projects amount to more than a lot of gamers collect and we have a large collection of finished projects as well.

As I said right now we are in the process of re-organizing and purging yet again.  The pics above were taken a couple weeks into the process.  If we don't do this every now and again our project progress becomes impossible because we end up spending most of our time either looking for stuff we have misplaced or trying to find table space to work on things.  The problem is that we are at that critical stage where the things is getting away from us because of the sheer scope of the problem.  The pics above only show perhaps a quarter of our "hoard" and they are also the result of two weeks of purging quite a few things.

To be perfectly honest I feel like I need to get rid of 75% of my collection and I would still have enough stuff to keep me busy for a very long time.  In reality I will be lucky to actually unload or pitch 10% of the crap partly because I"ll probably get burned out before I get done with the process but even that will help.
My biggest fear is that right now we have plenty of room for a gaming stuff.  In fact we could cram a whole lot more stuff into our gaming and studio space without it taking over the rest of the house but I can't be sure that we won't end up in another place in the future that just isn't going to have room for the stuff we have.

 We have been in that situation before and had it pretty much take over the rest of the house.  That's not really fun.  I'm not really a hoarder by nature and while I can put up with clutter in certain areas I can't stand when it takes over the house and it gets to the point that I am embarrassed to even open the door when someone stops by much less have company over.

Anyway the point is that even though I love to game and I am lucky enough to have a wife and family who love it as well that in itself can be as much a curse as a blessing.  It makes it easy to over collect and over spend on gaming stuff and that can cause real complications.  I hope to get on top of this situation before I give up on it and just shove everything back into boxes and back into the corners and closets which won't help a dang thing.