Post number two this morning due to insomnia/tinnitus.
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Here’s a crafter’s dilemma, as a crafter gets older, toward retirement age.
I’m going to make this a bit easier to understand by reducing the actual quantities.
Let’s say, you have enough crafting “projects” (yarn, quilting material/projects, wood in workshop, or whatever) to last you for the next three to four years (or longer), at the consistent rate you’re making things now – let’s say completing one project a month.
But, during these next few years, you are also adding (buying) new materials for new projects, every few months.
You’re making consistent progress with your current projects, but you’re still adding onto your project supply.
Because, the manufacturers still are coming out with new materials, different designs, we products, etc., and you see something you like in the project store, a new color of yarn, a new fabric design, a new project kit, and you “just gotta” have it, so you purchase it.
And even though, you are consistently finishing your projects, and the backlog of projects is steadily decreasing (assuming you didn’t buy any new stuff), the amount of new purchases of new stuff is actually increasing the backlog a little bit each year.
And, then, you get to be my age, and you look at your closet shelf, with the backlog of projects, and you look ahead in time, and even though you will be still around for the next ten yrs, you realize you won’t ever be able to finish all of the projects you want to start on.
This is really hard to enunciate via the written word.
Here is a concrete example.
For example, let’s “pretend” that I have just thirty Model Railroad structure kits on my closet shelf. I complete six kits each year. This means, my project backlog shelf should be cleared in five yrs.
But, during each of those years, I’m acquiring, let’s say, three new kits each yr, so, when my current backlog of five years is up, I’ll have acquired 15 new kits, and I’m slowing down, so I’m now only doing three kits a yr, which will take me another five yrs. During that second period of five years, I’m still buying kits.
Etc. etc. etc.
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In the beginning of my hobby, I didn’t keep track of my purchases, nor what was on my backlog shelf. But, in the last year or so, I stopped and created a spreadsheet, detailing the backlog.
This week, due to various reasons, since we have just a wee bit of downtime at work (i.e., zero work to do since Mgmt has just decided to move to a different application), I was looking at the spreadsheet, and I come to realize, I have enough projects (i.e., structure kits) to keep me busy until I’m a hundred and seventeen yrs old.
I.
Am.
Not.
Kidding.
According to Google, a (male) person born in 1959, has a life expectancy of ~82. If I live to be age seventy, it increases to ~85.
But, you can see, assuming I live out to my life expectancy, I will still have projects on the shelf for twenty or more yrs beyond my eminent death.
Therein lies the rub.
I know yarn costs $$, and bolts of material cost $$, and planks of wood, I’m supposing if you added up all your skanks of yarn or bolts (or planks), that are sitting in your closet, if you actually thought about it for a few mins, you might realize you have several hundreds of dollars of that you’ll never get around to using, building, etc.
For me, this isn’t yarn, this isn’t cloth, this is model railroad structure kits. Each kit costs anywhere from thirty to seventy, to sometimes just a wee bit more than a hundred or so dollars.
In my case, it’s not just several hundreds of dollars sitting in my closet of yarn, or bolts of material, it’s a few thousand dollars, accumulated over the last ten years.
By the way, this applies to books as well. I also now have a backlog of books to read…
[Stop the fucking buying, Brian. Just freaking stop already.]
Back to my kits.
Most of you have adult children. I do not.
[Elyse counts, but also doesn’t count. Long, but different story there.]
Even when you have adult children, they, sometimes, or, most likely, do not share your passion for your crafting hobby. Most of your siblings are either near your age, or aren’t interested in your hobby, as much as you are.
So, what’s going to happen to all that stuff in your closet? All that wood in your woodworking shop? In those tubs hidden under the bed, from the prying eyes of your spouse, or from the prying eyes of your adult children? All those books in your book case?
I know with regard to books, if you paid $15 for that book, you’ll probably only get $2 for it later.
[I learned recently that BFF Rick collected beanie babies when it was a thing many, many yrs ago. He’s got like, three hundred of them. Believe me, I was as surprised as you are, at a person having that many of them, but he has. He’s told me, even via eBay, he’ll most likely only get $300 for the bunch (probably much less), even though, he probably spent five to ten times that when acquiring them.]
Same with books.
Maybe not the same with yarn, or bolt of material, or stamping up stamps, or archiver’s sheets of paper, etc.
I don’t know.
Depending on your perspective, a few hundreds of dollars of left over yarn isn’t that big of a deal to you. But it could be.
In my case, it is.
Unlike books, my kits retain their value. This is due to a couple of different (but related) reasons. For some of my kits, the kit manufacturer has retired, and now their kits are “out of production”, not being made any longer, and there is a limited supply of them on the resale (think: eBay) market, with many model railroaders hobbyists wanting them. The related and secondary portion of this is, most of the kits I’ve purchased, were purchased via eBay, at the resale price, and therefore, they are still worth the amount of money that I originally paid for them, due to the first reason noted previously (a limited supply, and with this particular hobby’s “popular” demand for these kits).
What I’ve been trying to get at, for several paragraphs now, is the fact, I’m sitting on a treasure trove of “stuff”, but that “treasure” is only of value to myself, and/or other model railroad hobbyists.
The person that comes into my abode, once I hit that age of life expectancy, to clear out the abode, will not know (or understand) the value of this particular “treasure”, since they are not “hobby aware”.
This is the dilemma of a hobbyists, the crafter.
And, even if you left your “spreadsheet” on the closet shelf, or tagged each box, with a “post it” note, indicating value of each box, will that person really want to, or have the time, to sit at their computer listing dozens of (individual) items on eBay, and dealing with packing them up, and taking to the post office, etc.?
Or, will they do what every beanie baby collecter does, and just “bunch” them up, and try to sell them in “huge” quantities? Thereby, only getting a fraction of their true value??
Do you really want your heir to only get $500 for your stash, or wouldn’t you want to ensure they got as much as they could get, which could be five or ten times as much?
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Like I first mentioned, it dawned on me a few days ago, I will never complete my backlog of MRR structure kits.
I’m telling you this story because it seems I’m not the only one thinking about this.
I came across a model railroaders blogger a yr or three ago. He blogs about his kit building, and posts pictures of the building process, and the resulting structure buildings. His work is awesome. Top notch with his weathering, etc.
Based on his posts, if I remember correctly, he’s only been building MRR kits for less than ten yrs, but he’s cranked out forty (or maybe it’s eighty?) of them in those ten yrs. He’s very prolific.
I’m telling you about this gentlemen, since, as I was thinking about my backlog problem earlier this week, he blogged about it last night. The same problem I’ve been in a quandary over these last few days.
[causing this latest bout of insomnia – just kidding]
All of us model railroaders are having this same issue as we get older, and in fact, some model railroaders have a larger problem, if they have actually started a model railroad layout in their basement. There, then, is the issue of what to do with it when the hobbyist passes? In most cases, the hobbyist has spent ten, twenty years on his layout. You can sell the locomotives, and the rolling stock (freight cars, etc.), but, to move a layout out of a basement is a huge effort. Besides, there is the more larger problem of, who could you get to take it off your hands, even if it could be “easily” moved (which it cant).
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I’ve run out of steam – I started This post at around 4AM, and I think I’m about ready to fall back to sleep so I don’t have the “thinking” energy to sum up, and/or come up with a conclusion to this modeler’s/crafter’s dilemma.
I might try to conclude this a bit later on today.
We’ll see.
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Lisa Mullins Nelson
Cindy Hyden
Denise Vokoun
Vilius Bileisis
