Rules to live your (painting) life by

/begin topical wargaming reference
Anyone who says Nurgle is less powerful after the recent Codex release is completely and totally wrong if the plague going around my office and friends circle is anything to go by...
/end topical wargaming reference

I've mentioned before I have a bit of a system for keeping track of how my painting progress is going. Since I originally started the system, I've tried to come up with some rules to try and keep my painting mountain under control.

My wife had already instituted one;

• No miniatures without a storage solution

This is a perfectly sensible solution in times of limited budget and space, but significant backlog. It means I have to save up for new cases and shelving in between saving up for miniatures, and means I actually attack the backlog.

Once I instituted my tracking spreadsheet, I realised that given I have months of work to complete, I really shouldn't be making the situation any worse, I instituted the next rule.

• Don't finish the month with more work than you started with

This keeps my errant spending further in check, as otherwise I may buy two miniatures I intend on detailing up ridiculously and completely overshadow the ten odd gaming quality miniatures I finished that month...

I then started discovering that the spreadsheet I'd made didn't include lots of projects I'd forgotten about, or found while clearing up my study. As this is behaviour I want to encourage, I don't want to penalise to motivate me to paint more by limiting spending if I tidy old boxes...

So, now I have a reserve project list. Each single model, unit or thing counts as a project. I can add projects at the start of a month, but it must be replacing an existing closed project. There are, honestly, more projects than I will probably ever complete on the spreadsheet already, so coming up with cool new ideas for projects is not going to be very helpful. It also helps encourage me finishing off that last bit of basing or touching up to finish up a project or job.

• Don't add projects to your work in progress - adding to the work in progress from stuff you've found or been given can only happen once you've completed a project, and only happens at the start of a month

If stuff sits around and is not on the spreadsheet, I will get nagged to ebay it. This is probably not unreasonable!

I am sure my rules will get added to over time, and probably to the point of over-complication to the point where they are of no use or interest to anyone else. But I must be careful not to turn into the Arnold Judas Rimmer of the gaming community and spend all my time writing spreadsheets for painting and modelling projects I never actually do...