Tips to Store Your Mini Collection

So you have achieved something you never thought you would, but that your friends have been telling you for a while it was going to happen. You have so many minis in your collection you don’t even know where they should be in your house.

You are starting to see what Marie Kondo used to talk about, but you look at the minis and they all bring you joy. At least the ones you can see. And also, even Marie Kondo gave up on keeping everything tidy all the time.

You will have to do it yourself, but how? Move and buy a secret underground bunker where you can store tons of minis and swim on them like Scrooge Mcduck would? Break the rules of time and space and make the minis fit inside a matchbox? Get a personal organizer that can make everything fit, but it will probably get really expensive and will not align with your personal style?

Fear not, we have some ideas that can help you solve this conundrum.

Make It Your Way

You have to organize it in a way that makes sense for you. Maybe you want to make your mini collection look like a museum, with things categorized by species, theme, setting, astrological sign, feng shui or whatever way that makes you feel comfortable. Or maybe your priority is aesthetics and you just want the room to look as cool as possible. Maybe it’s more about “having a usable space in your house where the minis also live. Once you have a concept, even if it’s “it has to fit in my room without the house crumbling”, you have to start making it work.

You certainly have thought about having stands and filling every open space on your bookshelves with as much minis as you can fit. But there are too many of them, or you don’t like how they are in the way of that signed copy of Good Omens you bought in 2013. You need things to fit better, look better, be more tidy, at least for the minis.

And maybe you have a great gold wyrm that doesn’t fit anywhere, because it’s too big and clumsy, or your cats are certainly going to give him the last flight of its inanimate life directly to the floor.

You will, probably, never have already made or bought furniture for every mini you will buy or draft.

So let’s get creative.

Learn From the Ones that Deal With Kids

Do you know who has a lot of experience handling small and fun things that need to be safe, even though there’s never enough room for everything? Moms and dads with small children.

Take a page out of their book and improvise. Everything from nail polish stands and ice cube trays for very small minis to trophy stands for that ginormous mini (that could probably be called a maxi) that does not fit anywhere. Use what you can get easily, at least as a first step, if you need a little more room to operate before going to the big leagues.

Pinterest is full of ideas for making a room work with as many action figures, bobbleheads and minis as someone could possibly fit.  

Ok, but maybe you don’t want something that looks so busy and overwhelming. What else can we do?

Learn From Museums

If you are into art and history and are interested in museums, you probably know that they never show everything they have in stock. Every museum has a lot more to show, but they need to make things make sense, be interesting, and also, use as much of their collection as possible.

So why shouldn’t you?

Think that, even though you have limited space, not all your minis have to be visible or close to your hands all the time. You can have the horde month and get all your orcs and trolls out there. Then go to the faerie weeks and make people that go to your house think “wow, where were those the last time?”

If you are not worried that everyone has to be accessible and easily seen, plastic bins with lids and screw boxes that you can get at tool shops and chains like Home Depot can easily help you keep a lot of your collection hidden from view and safe.

But maybe you think all of your minis deserve a special place for them, somewhere they can feel home. And then…

Do It Yourself

There’s no space as fit for a mini than the one that is really made for her. And that leaves us with some things that can be very interesting.

You can certainly buy shelves that have niches enough to fit your minis, but they will probably not have the closest and more custom fit as possible. There are ways to get that even more precise and unique. And that’s where we are going next.

Box inserts and plastic stands can be custom for mini sizes, and be the greatest fit ever. Unfortunately, they will usually need to be on shelves and we are back some steps. Usable, but hard to make sure they will work for you. And then there’s making what’s right for you.

Wooden shelves can be custom made, and I wouldn’t expect every mini collector to have woodworking as a hobby, but maybe you have a friend that likes or works with that, and this way you could get shelves that are exactly what you want. You can always buy those, custom, for a price that’s not really something that will make your eyes bleed.

Start 3D Printing

Finally, the truly twenty-first century option. The thing that makes us feel like we live, at least a little bit, in a sci-fi/cyberpunk world. 3D printing.

Ten years ago, a 3D printer was so expensive that most of us wouldn’t even think about using one for stuff like that. But they are getting more and more affordable, and, using one of those, you can print small shelves that fit exactly your collection.

None of the tips we discussed is the one and only way to solve it all, but using some of those very different techniques you can make sure you can keep collecting and keep your living (or working) space looking good.

Now that you know everything about how to store and organize your collection of minis, check out this post about how to paint them all, making your living room look even cooler.

Loot Studios can help you print and paint highly detailed minis, statues and props. Choose your favorite bundle from our previous releases or sign up for Fantasy or Sci-Fi to receive a new bundle every month. You can also check out some tips at our YouTube Channel.