The above is my man cave. Its our extra room. Actually its not really "extra" anymore now that we have two kids, sometime in the near future this will be my daughter's room. But since we moved into the house almost 4 years ago, its been the room where all my hobby stuff goes.
Um, yeah. Its.....well, it is what it is. A random mess of boxes and junk piled up everywhere. There are actually some good pieces in there, basically every vintage card I've ever posted on this blog is somewhere in this picture, probably in one of those 800 card boxes. You can kind of see a baseball in a ball holder in there too, roughly in the middle of the photo, that has my Hank Aaron autograph that is nearly faded to nothing after 28 years, which I think still counts for something.
I really like the concept of a man cave and I also like interior decorating, but since I've always known that I would have to give this room up at some point, I've never bothered to try to spruce it up into a neat cave. Thus, my man cave room sucks.
This is also kind of a problem with Japanese housing: its way too small for man caves to begin with. They don't have basements or studies, they come with exactly as many bedrooms as you have people and no extra space for anything at all. This is a problem not just with residences but also work spaces, if you've ever been to any kind of Japanese office you've probably been overwhelmed by the sense of clutter since the people using it just don't have the space to properly store stuff.
Which isn't to say this is just a Japan thing, I'm sure a lot of people are pressed for space in North America too. I'm curious if anyone else out has a man cave like mine that by all rights they should be ashamed of due to its complete and absolute lack of any sort of attempt to make it presentable? I suspect we may be the silent majority in the collecting community.
I have half a room dedicated to my man cave...it slowly gets overwhelmed with boxes and clutter if I don’t stay on it. It’s weird....when it is clean it invites clutter on to the desk. In Japan I can totally relate....not enough room.
ReplyDeleteI like that line "When it is clean it invites clutter" - so true!
DeleteI have more of an office... with boxes shelves of binders and boxes all around. My goal is to one day own a house out in the country where I can have my own man cave. But that won't happen for many, many years.
ReplyDeleteLOL, my dream is to one day own a house in the country like that too. In Japan this is actually a pretty realistic goal. House prices in rural areas are so cheap here in some cases they are literally giving them away. If I still have a job in 10 years I think I might be able to get one and set up an actual man cave in it :)
DeleteI have a couple of shelves in one closet, and one more shelf in another closet. Not sure that qualifies as a man cave. Or maybe it's two very small man caves?
ReplyDeleteSounds more like a "man shelf" than a "man cave" but I think it counts!!
DeleteFor 13 years I lived in a one-bedroom apartment, shared with my wife and (for the last two years of that time) with my son. My baseball card collection is pretty small, so that's not an issue. But I know all about lack of space: we used the transoms over the doors as ad hoc bookshelves because we didn't have room for any more proper bookshelves.
ReplyDeleteThat is almost exactly the same as my experience. For the first 12 years of our marriage my wife and I lived in small apartments together, and also with us the last two of those were spent with our son. By the time he was 2 we realized we needed a bigger place and moved into an actual house where we now live.
DeleteFor pretty much all of that time my collection has been relatively small, enough to fit on one shelf (most of the clutter in the photo in this post is non-hobby stuff, anything we don't have a place for goes into the room).
I routinely purge anything I don't want and even stuff I'm on the fence about keeping to ensure that I never need more than a shelf, let alone a whole room, dedicated to my hobbies.
ReplyDeleteThat is a really good idea. I've been purging stuff from my other hobbies for a while now to make space, though the stupid Coronavirus has interrupted that significantly since I can't sell stuff anymore due to the postal interrputions.
Delete