The Reason You're Not Building (In The Hobby Space) by Liam

The Reason You’re Not Building

Are you a naturally organized person? 

I’m not—at least not instinctively. I can’t relax if there’s too much mess around me, so over time I’ve had to become more organized. I make a lot of lists. Every time I write one, I think, “This is it. This is the list that will fix me.”

Spoiler alert: they haven’t yet, but a boy can dream.

Organization only really happens for me when I sit down and think about it. I ask myself what I actually need out of my space. Recently, I started doing just that. I sat in my hobby room, took a good look around, and made a list (of course).

That moment came after I noticed something: I hadn’t been building or painting anything for days. I kept avoiding my workspace. When I finally went to my desk, I saw why. There were open boxes and model kit parts scattered everywhere, tools and supplies in chaos, and my camera gear just piled up in a sad heap. The sight of it made me want to turn around and do anything but hobby work. It felt like a hassle. Like a chore.

So yeah, it turns out being messy wasn’t working for me. Shocking, I know.

If you’ve ever felt the same—like your space is working against you, or the clutter makes it hard to focus, you’re not alone. Additionally, you might benefit from what I did next.

Ask Yourself

While I can’t promise this will solve all of your hobby problems (hobblems), it certainly can’t hurt to try what I did. Take some time tonight to sit at your workstation and ask yourself: Does this setup make me want to work? 

If the answer is no, then something has to change. Our hobbies are supposed to be fun, relaxing, even therapeutic. But if the mere sight of your workspace fills you with dread or exhaustion, then the hobby isn’t the problem: the space is. A hobby workstation has to be more than just functional, it has to be aesthetically welcoming, too. 

Regardless of where your workstation is, in a tote bin packed under your coffee table or a random desk in your living room covered in model kit boxes, you should be able to turn it into a functional and inspiring workplace by thinking about what you need while you work there.

There is a saying in meditation practice about “getting to the cushion” and actually meditating. In this instance, I’m going to apply it to hobbies as well. For something we’d say we love to do, it can be a struggle sometimes to actually do it. Why is that? At the end of a work day, a slow afternoon or a coffee-fueled lazy morning, what’s keeping us from “getting to the workstation?” 

For me, I’ve identified these factors:

• Barriers in the form of mess, general disorganization and lack of practical space.

• Distractions in the form of devices and various outside influences like social responsibilities.

• Ennui in the form of daily reminders of The Weight of It All™

Since making it a priority in my hobby room to mitigate these issues, I’m pleased to report that I find myself enjoying my hobby much more often. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t about “maximizing your productivity” or some such nonsense, this is about maximizing your enjoyment. 

Ow, Pain Points

I made a list of “pain points” I faced in my workspace that were keeping me from enjoying my time there. The list wasn’t in order of importance, it was just a stream of consciousness. If you’re finding it difficult, you can use mine! 

1. There seems to always be a mess on my desk or stuff on the floor.

2. A lot of my projects are ready for painting, but I seldom get to that stage.

3. I feel like I’m always getting up to find kits/parts/supplies or forgetting where they are entirely.

4. A lot of the stuff around my hobby room is seldom (or never) used.

None of these pain points were particularly deep revelations, but I don’t think they have to be. Sometimes simple problems come together to make the perfect procrastination cocktail. However, taking the time (that’s the most important part) to look at the issues one by one allowed me to internalize them. Now, understanding that all these things kept me from working on my hobbies, I asked myself the following questions and tried to answer them as honestly as I could. Below I’ve also included what exactly I did to try to mitigate these pain points, as well as included some pictures for good measure.

What would make me want to work on my hobbies? 

For me, a clean workspace is inviting. I need to know there’s no mess waiting for me to clean up, that there’s nothing pressing I need to do. In short, I need to know I’m mentally available to relax and that I’m not figuratively (and sometimes literally) drowning in tasks or mess. 

I decided that by taking 10 minutes to clean up and put things away after each session in my hobby room, (unless they absolutely have to be left out) I’d be able to make the space more inviting. It’s not a huge time sink, and now that I’m doing this every time, it’s been much more inviting. I decorated it with some artwork, some of which was from members of my YouTube channel’s Discord server to remind me of that sense of community. I also added some cute fairy lights which help with vibes—those are important. 

 

Are my current organizational methods working for me?

Despite having lots of little storage spaces, things weren’t as ergonomic and accessible as I wanted them to be. In addition, it was hard to find some things when I needed them, despite knowing they were tucked away somewhere. One can have all the little containers and shelves in the world, but if they aren’t organized based on one’s needs, they aren’t going to be very useful.

I knew this was going to be the most involved step of my overhaul, so I removed pretty much everything that could be removed from the hobby room. I sorted it all into different piles: one to keep, one for donation, the other for junk to be thrown out. I was actually pleasantly surprised with the sheer amount of stuff I was able to donate, while keeping the stuff I was throwing out down to a minimum so as to not be too wasteful. Over the weekend, I was able to give the whole room a deep clean and look at the empty space, sit in it and picture what supplies should go where. That was a very cathartic bookend to the first necessary step of sitting in the hobby mess and writing down all my pain points. 

The caveat with this is I can’t tell you what to put where, but think about what makes sense while you’re working and what you’d like nearby at all times. Think about the ergonomics of your workspace and how you move within it. I still have some work to do, namely on the walls and shelves, but it is a marked improvement over its previous incarnation!

 

How should I store my tools and supplies? 

There are some things I use with every project, but some are only situational. I don’t always need the NWSL Chopper II or my electric router, but I’ll always be using my hobby knife, cement and files. I adopted the mindset that being shrewd about what my essential tools are and what I can put away for situational use would help me overall by giving me more free space to stretch out and relax in.

Previously, my closet was a landslide waiting to happen. I cleaned it out during out the last step, making sure not to do it all in one day to avoid burnout. Once I had donated and otherwise gotten rid of whatever needed to go, I was able to make better use of the closet. I installed two cheap but functional shelves inside it on either side for all my situational supplies, like my hotwire table and molding/casting supplies. Another thing that I was able to do leads into my next point: the painting problem.

How do I make it easier to start painting?

Identifying that there was some mental block I had built up around painting, I thought hard about why that was. Where I landed was that I had made it too inconvenient or time consuming to get started. My paints were in drawers on one side of the room, and the painting area was hard to keep clean when a project was on the go. 

I divided my hobby room into a build area and a paint area, which helps keep things much more tidy. I also bought another cheap organizational supply, a tray caddy from TEMU which ended up being perfect for all my paint. Now, when I’m painting I just wheel this bad boy out and I can hide it away in the closet again when I’m done. 

Your Solutions May Not Be the Same as Mine

This is what worked for me, with minimal spending to buy new things. While I found some new organizational supplies were needed to execute my vision, I didn’t break the bank at all. I was able to repurpose (and in some cases, rediscover) things that made organizing the new version of my hobby room much easier. 

I think the most important step was removing everything I could from the space and sorting it into keep, donate and junk piles. While this made a mess for a weekend, it allowed me to assess what I really needed to keep and get rid of stuff I had been unknowingly holding onto for years. 

While my hobby room may not look like the most professional, YouTube worthy setup, it doesn’t need to: it just has to be a welcoming space that suits my needs. Now I’m closer to that ideal than ever before, and it’s my hope for you to assess your own space and make it work for you. If you do, I hope my little organization adventure can be of help!