Ruki’s stupidity guide: How to make the most out of your room.
Posted in Random Concepts on Oct 23rd, 2007 By Runningkid
One problem with being a manga or novel reader is that you will forever be struggling for more shelf space. Even worse, being fanboy often leaves you with multiple copies of the same item. This is, of course, under the assumption that you actually buy the manga you read and the art books you fap over. Prioritising your collection for display is normal, but what about the overflow that doesn’t make it onto your shelf? The class notes that are supposed to be kept tidy?
The Bed or Chair System
What you’ve got to understand is, you are either going to sit on your chair or sleep on the bed. So that means it leaves one of them unoccupied and hence wasted space! So instead of dumping what you cannot fit onto your shelf into a box or just tossing it on the floor, you can make use of this spare space! When you wish to sleep, simply just transfer the items from the bed onto the chair. Similarly, if there is an overflow from your bed to the chair you can just dump it onto the first surface you see, EXCEPT the floor! The reason being, these are stuff you like or things you need on a regular basis. The floor is a filthy place; dust, sweaty footprints (it’s okay if you wish to think your foot never sweat…) and god knows what will crawl over it at night. Amongst other reasons, safety should also be factored in.
Imagine your best friend rushing into you room in the middle of the night to tell you that you have won the lottery which you didn’t buy a ticket for. All of a sudden he/she trips over the books that you had tossed onto the floor before stumbling to sleep, and lands face first onto your computer, breaking your (z:) drive containing your precious doujins and other “work”. Then your computer explodes setting your house on fire. Fatal. On a serious note, leaving stuff on the floor doesn’t help keeping it in mint condition.
Books, folders, magazines and whatnot comes in all shapes and sizes, some times it can be difficult to stack them up, especially the seat of the chair isn’t always flat. That is why when stacking them onto your chair, try and keep the base as wide as possible as shown on above. It wouldn’t be good if they fell onto the floor in middle of the night.
The Keyboard or Workspace system
This one may not work depending on how you prefer to do things. For me, I either work on paper or the computer. Pretty much the same principle as the Bed or Chair system. Since space is limited, when I need to work on paper I simply place the keyboard and mouse one side. In fact most of the time I try and switch off my PC since I do it find it too much of a distraction, more often than not I end up browsing the net rather than doing my work.
That’s it for now! This is the sort of lame posts I come up with when I have too much time on my hands. Orz. But, believe it or not… this is actually what I do to keep my room “tidy”.
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Like I, you too struggle for space it seems… I like your system but for me, everyone’s non necessary junk is stored in my room since it is the biggest. So i have all the books, VHS and piano in my room so I am kinda lacking for space…
My saving grace is that I do everything from my laptop so I can lounge on any available surface to internets… I seriously need to get more (better) shelving as my last dedicated Manga/Anime shelf actually collapsed from the weight.. Wall mounted shelving is a big nono if you are looking to storing not displaying I guess.
I really like your shelf unit… Shows off the manga and others quite well.
I can’t wait till I move out to really have a room I can customise =P
Haha…
So you DO fap to your art books… =P
I order a lot of manga, novels, and artbooks online, but I end up storing them away in the closet, in the box they’re shipped in. There is simply no way to display them… Uguu!! I really need more shelves.
I don’t know, that shelf unit looks like wasted space to me. You could rework it to have a fourth shelf of manga. My own method for manga is: if I want it on display, it goes on my computer shelf. If I haven’t read it yet, it goes on my computer shelf. If I have read it and don’t want it displayed, I put it in my very-long dresser. (What else would you put in a dresser? Clothes? That would be silly.)
I solved the “bed or chair” one time when moving. I ditched the whole “bed” thing. Now I have a reclining chair which doubles as a bed and a chair, although I use a fold-up chair at my PC desk. Ditching the concept of a “bed” really adds to the amount of space one has for things.
The trick to using space effectively is to organize things in such a way so that there is no space between items, and nothing visible of the shelf/area it’s sitting on. This applies more to actual items rather than books, but it can be done too.
For example, your shelves in the first picture. On top of the properly put books, you could put more books horizontally stacked up. If you take out a proper book, the ones on either side will still hold up the stacked books. If you take one of the ones from on top out, well, it’s not that hard to lift the other books back up to replace it later. Or just put it on top, and use it as a system to keep track of how frequently stuff is read. Put things like figurines or cups, or other small items in most of the space in front of the books. Move them to one side or the other to access the desired book.
But then again, I’m abnormal. I thrive on reorganizing on occaision. Just coming up with a better idea for everythings place and then taking a day out to move it all. About 4 or 5 times a year that happens…
hmm.. I think you may want too look at how much space you have and try to work around fitting stuff in most of the small spaces. For example, my room contains alot of games (around 300!….never become a games collector!) and i try to compromise space with lots of draws and shelving. Alas this causes a problem when i would like to play nights into dreams on my sega saturn but my shiney power adaptor seems to have gone a miss. *humpf*.
What i’m trying to say (at nearly 4am) is not to worry about space and how you keep your stuff. Heck id love to have piles of manga just lying around so i could create small and ineffective forts, but i just like to keep order in my room.
Also it looks like you have a fair bit of room on your manga shelf for more manga. You can never have enough manga. manga manga manga. And yes i may just go to sleep now. =_= zzzzz
orz
first thing …u need to clean up with ur room!! (looks at the clothes dangling ard)
I think we all need one of those Lunar Robe’s from Night Wizard… infinite storage space get!
Clean your room or you’re grounded with no allowance for a week.
>=(
@Derrange, I wish I had a laptop. Hopefully be getting one for uni.
@Kyokii, =.=;
@Christopher Fritz, putting clothes in a dresser? you are right, that would be stupid! The truth is I have enough shelf space for now, since my manga collection is still small. It’s just that I don’t like putting my class notes with it, therefore all the work goes onto my chair or bed while the stuff I wish to display goes onto the other shelf (haven’t got a picture of)
@Guru3, but that wouldn’t look nice….. xD
@thund3r, as I said, I actually have another shelf. Just that I don’t want my notes and work to…. “pollute” my manga shelf =P
@oOgA, who needs to tidy their room with the chair or bed system?!
@insanelampshade, omgz! spoiler!!!! only joking, although I still haven’t gone round to seeing episode 2 since ep1 wasn’t all that impressive.
@DS, I don’t get allowance anyways X3, I earn my own money! muhahaha. */me looks at his empty wallet*
lol is this for real? I’ve never had a problem with keeping things tidy in any room….I think organization is kind of standard. I think Ruki is just trying to find an excuse to show off his collection! xD
lol @ Totali
=.=;
it’s just a fun post anyways, not like my collection is anything to show off, I have so little stuff…
hold on where is all your galge/eroge games?…ok just games..
It sucks to not have your own room, like me =___=;; space becomes an even more problem.
though, I think I dominate much of the stuff in the room… with my collection kept in our cabinets and drawers. XD
usagijen, there’s only one solution…. when your room mate is sleeping, dump all the stuff that you don’t have space for onto him.