Moving in general stinks, but moving miniatures is potentially even worse. Check out these 3 tips on how to move your miniatures and hobby gear safely!
Well, it has been a couple of weeks, but the boxes have been packed, moved, and finally unpacked again. Now I finally have all my plastic toys in some semblance of order.
The reason for my two-week hiatus was with the new addition joining the family in November, we found that the tiny beloved starter home we bought 10 years ago just wasn’t going to be able to handle a family of four so we packed up for more space. (I finally have a basement and love it) Two weeks later the dust is settling and while I’ve spent most of my time painting walls and moving furniture up and down flights of stairs, I am almost ready to pick up a smaller paintbrush and get to work.
First off, I want to cover something that I recently spent a ton of time doing. That’s moving your hobby stuff and the best to do it.
Box Size Is Important
It all starts with the right-sized boxes. I got a ton of different sized boxes from the in-laws who live near a Christian camp that has a cafeteria. They offered to give her a bunch of them for free that are not broken down. This is a great way to get a ton of boxes in a short period of time. Just call around to nearby restaurants and see if they have some boxes they haven’t broken down yet and offer to run out and grab them. The different sizes are great for all the different items you need and lets you keep the heavier nonfragile bits out of the ones that contain your more fragile bits.
Separate the Miniature Herd
The next task is to separate your models into two groups: painted and unpainted. For my painted miniatures, I packed the ones I could fit into a gun case nice and snug (see this article), so they wouldn’t shift around during transport. I slapped a piece of masking tape on those cases and labeled it fragile and Warhammer. Once that’s done, I put them off to one side where I knew I could later take them myself to the new house. Then I was left looking at all the models that wouldn’t fit into those gun cases.
Staring at the likes of Archaon, Lady O, random guys on flying mounts, etc. I had to figure out how to get them into a box without breaking them or chipping their paint. My solution was to use the smallest boxes I had and to pack them in there tightly and fill in all the gaps with tissue. This would prevent them from rubbing against one another but also give them a little bit of weight in case I hit a bump the box wouldn’t move too much. For my non-painted, but put together models I packed them in smaller boxes as tightly as I could, but I wasn’t so worried about them rubbing against one another.
Sure, I might have a couple of broken bits to repair but generally, it won’t take nearly as long to put those back together as packing them individually would take. Regardless all these boxes get marked fragile in big bold marker and are set to the side so that I can personally load them onto my truck. (I was so scared of packing Archaon that I put him in my kids’ car seat and drove him over to the new house myself)
Unpack & Scheme
For unpacking, you’ll almost want to be more careful than when you packed. During the move, some of your stuff could have shifted. Pull out the tissues very carefully you don’t want to snag any bits of models and break them in the home stretch. Then put them somewhere that won’t be bumped by other boxes, friends helping you move stuff, etc.
This is also a great opportunity to take stock of what you own and organize everything. (see this article) Knowing what you have is a huge bonus in terms of planning your next project and stopping yourself from buying multiples of the same thing (like Khorn red or Nuln oil). Write it all out in a notebook or better yet in google drive so that you can access it whenever you want. You can also take stock of what you may have had sitting around for a long time and decide to unload it via trading or selling.
Organizing this way is very effective to go from having a backlog of miniatures and being overwhelmed. Also, it can get you some cash or models if you bought a project 5 years ago and moved on from it. Rather than letting it collect dust for another 5 years, trade it for something you will put together and paint.
There you have it! A couple of quick moving tips from someone who just moved a lot of Warhammer stuff without a fancy case or anything. However, I just bought a metal one and need to magnetize all my bases (more on that later).
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