BUSTED! 3 Myths of Hobby Setup That are False

Building a hobby area can seem like a daunting task for all the wrong reasons.

Master Your Mancave: Myth Bustin'

As covered in the introduction part of this series, having a proper area to hobby is important.  In this first part, let's break down some of the more popular ( and usually dead wrong) setup myths.

Myths of the Mancave:

#1  It costs too much, I'd rather spend my money on ...

#2  You need a whole room dedicated to the hobby

#3  I need everything to be perfect to paint

Let's get these out of the way first.  Those are popular thoughts I've seen and heard more than once, which also happen to be dead wrong.

#1 It costs too much

This is what's stopping most people from considering a proper setup, and it's mainly due to the widespread other myths about what you really need.   The example in the next part of Master your Mancave will cover building your paint area for 0 dollars, 0 skills and in less than one hour.  How much cheaper can you need?

Much like building an entire army, the real cost of a mancave is best spread overtime, upgrading your setup as you go rather than purchasing a million things at once.  Start small, upgrade as you need, keep yo' precious monies.

#2 You need a whole room dedicated to the hobby

This goes along with:  "I don't have enough space" and the dreaded " Once I have a room, then I'll build one"  Oh the humanity!

Don't have much space?  Maybe you don't need the full range of paint from GW, P3 and Vallejo to paint?

You need about as big of a space as your lap, and not much bigger than a box for storing.  The idea that you need space is also misconstructed that you need a whole lot to paint.  1 area for building, 1 area for painting, 12 pots of paint a brush and a cup of water.  Think you need a whole room for that?

Yes, it's nice to have.  Most of the time, it's also impractical and useless to have.  More so, it's impractical to wait until you do have that space before you start.

#3 I need everything to be perfect

This is the best one.  It's the most common one too.  I LOVE THAT.  I love it mostly because people love to brag about their perfect setup.  I've seen folks post 3-4 time that they cleaned their hobby room ( because yes, most of the braggers also buy in to the huge mancave myth)  without once seeing them finish a single model.

The "cleaning first" phenomenon is everywhere in life, it's one of the biggest procrastinating technique used by our brain to trick us.  I need to study, but first I should fold all that laundry.  Folded laundry has no impact on your ability to study, much like having all your paints lined up and stored in fancy little holders has no impact on your ability to clean up mold lines from those 20 orks.

Yes, cleaning up is somewhat important.  But you can make it easy on yourself and simplify what cleaning up requires.

You will have much more pride and results posting pictures of finished models than pictures of your awesome mancave.  You can't show off that mancave at the game store to wow your gaming buddies, although I'm sure some will try...

Now that your myths have  been busted, get ready to start building!