This is something I have been planning for years. And the way plans go, it hadn't been going anywhere. Recently it was largely due to my hobby hiatus, but I digress.

I used to store everything in a wide variety of cardboard boxes left over from television sets, instant noodles and everything in between. In addition, some of them were not really boxes but rather open cardboard trays. This had a number of problems.

First of all, the boxes were not standardized. There were large boxes and small boxes and medium boxes. There were heavy sturdy boxes and not quite so sturdy ones. Most of the really flimsy ones I threw away, except for the GW game boxes. This meant that arranging the boxes on the shelves was problematic. And quite frankly, getting to the bottom boxes was a chore.

The second problem was that despite marking the boxes it was hard to remember exactly where everything was. And given the amount of stull I have, it was actually hard to recall that I even had a particular item, aka the "I have a ruined Greek temple?" syndrome.

And finally, the open boxes were prone to collect a heavy layer of dust over time. My hobby room is not a very clean environment...

Seeing others use transparent plastic boxes with integral lids finally got me started. Nothing new about plastic boxes per se, I've been using them myself for quite a while. It's just that ones with lids (of reasonable size anyway) have been either hard to obtain or relatively expensive.

I went and bought a pile of these new boxes with lids. On the plus side, the lids can be locked in place instead of just sitting on top of the box. And while not dirt cheap in the quantities I needed them, they are reasonably inexpensive.

I put stuff in the boxes. Then I ran out of boxes and had to get more. Then the store ran out of boxes and I had to go to another store for more boxes (at higher price to boot!) I also produced two carloads of cardboard for recycling... and I probably still need more boxes. I just need to get more foam trays first, but more about that in a separate post.

But I'm pretty happy with the results. The transparent boxes give the hobby room an airier look and stuff seems to be easier to find now.