A place for everything and everything in its place, but what happens when you run out of place?

I am gearing up for Dave’s visit and our whirlwind 36 hour comic shop, comic convention, and casino adventure, but I find myself contemplating the worst part of this hobby—Storage Space. The collection from my youth only filled one long box. When I started collecting again I moved that into 3 short boxes. It quickly grew to 5 and now 12 — 6 with the books I’ve read and 6 with those I’ve yet to read. I expect this to grow to 14 before October. I have moved out of the classic white cardboard boxes into the slimmer collapsible ones that pack closer together, but that will not be enough.

The primary storage area for my books.

Now in close up! (Yeah I know there are seven, but I swear one is almost empty!)

The stories I’ve yet to read.

I’m contemplating some other strategies to reduce this tribble like growth:

Slow my acquisitions.
Sell off what I’m not into.
Find better storage space.
Get rid of other space hog hobbies.

Number 1 is a no brainer. I have to start limiting the size of the hauls. Right now I’m fishing with dynamite. It’s effective, but has unintended consequences. Luckily, what I have is a lot comic books and not a boatload of concussed fish. I need to start hunting with more precision. Shop with an agenda.*

* He would make Shannon Hamilton proud. -Editor

Selling books I don’t enjoy is a compelling idea, but what to sell and where. A shop will likely toss them all back in the dollar bins after paying me pennies on the dollar. The pennies on the dollar doesn’t bother me, but the I feel every book deserves to be treated better than what they go through in those bins. Auctions—well that could turn into another huge hobby!

Finding better storage space is most appealing to me. De-cluttering the house is always a good idea. There’s just not that much more I can do there. Renting storage space might be an option, that can be expensive. So until Pym’s* inventions reach the consumer level I’m probably out of luck there.

* Hank Pym is…wait, if you don’t understand this reference you might be in the wrong place! -Editor

Finally, the harder thing to do would be giving up some other space intensive hobby. Guitars and amplifiers do not stack as neatly as comic books. I can’t bring myself to give up that form of artistic expression though. The regular bookshelves are very full, but comic books don’t fit well there anyway. The miniature painting I started doing again during the pandemic; Well, there is a large storage box of that stuff sitting under two short boxes. Moving that to the basement might just buy me another box or two in the office area.*

* As you can see in the pictures above it has! -Geoff

I know this isn’t a very exciting post, but it’s truth. Elliott from Haven for Heroes opened his shop, as he tells it, because his collection had grown too big. If anyone has recommendations for storing books more efficiently I’d love to hear them, so please post them in the comments. Oh, to keep on theme…comic book storage solutions are key to me!

Adendum:

After writing most of this issue I stated to have an idea. I can build a set of cubbies that could fit 3-4 short boxes on each row. Making it 4-5 rows high would give me a large amount of stable space in a fairly small footprint. It should just fit in the wall space left next to the book cases. So, along with cleaning out the area this piece of furniture may be what I need…for now!