Adventures in Model Horse Customizing During COVID

The model horse hobby activity seems to have exploded all over the internet as people are home, and many customizing. While I am still working a full-time job, even I have noticed an up-tick in my customizing productivity. I'm looking to enjoy this turn of events and ride the productivity as long as I can, as my summer is looking to be incredibly busy with non-model horse activities and responsibilities. But enough of that. Let's take a look at the projects I've been working on! 

The Model Horse Customs

It's mini mania in my studio, and these aren't even all of them. 2020 is the year I dove into micro min customizing. It started with just wanting to replace the stubby ears on the mini Wixom a dear friend sent me, and then she got a new mane. I snatched up a few more micros and oh no, semi-drastic customs.

I am in desperate need of adding new horses to my show string. My own string hasn't really grown since 2016 and you can tell now that it is my older work. Time for a revamp. Many of these will join my string and, with luck, they will do so this summer before things get busy.

The Great Studio DeClutter of 2020

Anyone familiar with the Japanese method of Kon Mari will instantly understand the huge undertaking my husband and I began even before COVID19 struck. A whole-house method of de-cluttering and organizing what is left, the heart of the Kon Mari method is about keeping only that which brings you joy. You start with clothes, proceed to books and paper, and finish with each room of the house. We are nearing the end, which means my studio is now part of the Kon Mari method.

The cat had to inspect and supervise my paper decluttering.

Kon Mari is ESPECIALLY challenging from a model horse standpoint. How in the world do you de-clutter a model horse collection by holding each model and asking if it sparks joy? Each one has childhood memories or something special about the art of it, and hence why it became part of my collection.  But part of the method is to first gather all of your things and pile them (pony pile, anyone?) and take in the amount of it. Are you happy with the size of the pile?

I loved my childhood collection of Breyers, but the short answer was no, I hated how many they were and how much space they occupied, and I even have a small collection by most people's standards!! I decided I wanted to reduce my whole collection by about 60 percent. Imagine looking at your collection and suddenly having less than half of it. That's the task I set out to accomplish.
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Even that isn't as simple as deciding who stays and who goes. I'm sure many of you can relate when I also had to declutter all the paperwork associated with these models. Oh my. I had started keeping records on my model horses as a teenager, but I clearly had no clue at that time about effective filing systems or deeming what was even worth documenting. So. Much. Paper. Clutter.

I started with four, 4-inch binders and a 2-inch binder.  I now have everything in one, 4-inch binder. Getting rid of horses helped, but condensing how I recorded model information and show records greatly helped. I also threw away a lot of paper ribbons I didn't care about and excessive pedigree information, like endless photos of ancestors. 

I also began the large undertaking of digitizing my model horse records with spreadsheets detailing all the model info for each horse. My entire collection is now logged on a few spreedsheets, which further reduced printed paperwork. 

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Then finally, there was the studio part of the decluttering process. In some ways, this was easier for me to decide what goes, but having so many boxes ready to ship the Breyers I was selling made it difficult.  I had to pull all of the sales horses and packing supplies out of the room, and for one brief moment, my studio looked glorious, as you can see here. That is one impressed doggo.

But that didn't last long. With art-supplies decluttered, I'm back to thinning the herd. Wish me luck!