I'm going to use this post as a heartfelt plea for you to go through your hobby/office spaces. Please declutter and throw out/donate/sell what you're not going to use. Look, actually look, at what you have and be brutally practical. Take what's left and put it into storage containers, then put those on shelves. It's a lot of work and it may not seem necessary if you're in your forever home or don't plan on moving.
But sometimes you don't get the luxury of planning on moving. Sometimes your forever home turns out not to be your forever home. And in general we collect and pile up a lot of crap.
I was somewhat lucky in that I started organizing things into plastic storage bins a while ago but never really finished. I'm paying for that now in some respects and in others not so much. I can use a lot of the 'unorganized' things and use them to fill space where the containers don't fit the boxes. That helps greatly in the short term, it isn't so great in the long term.
I'm not saying you can't keep things 'just in case'. I've got a lot of things like that for scratch building and they pack up just fine. When they're unpacked they're going into, you guessed it, plastic storage bins. I've also found a lot of things that I kept because it was more convenient than throwing them out. That's no longer the case. I don't need them and see no use for them in the near to moderate future. So they go.
When you're in one place for a long time this happens. It's easier to leave things out because you're using them than it is to go through and put them away. Piles occur. There's no judgement here. There can't be based on my own situation. But I'm saying that organization will save you a lot in the long run.
I'm a big fan of plastic bins over cardboard when possible. Get ones with tops. I use a lot of the dollar store ($1.25 store?) plastic shoeboxes and their smaller containers with handy flap lids. Those two sizes are mostly what I use since I can't make them too heavy for metal miniatures and the supplies fit mostly very well into the smaller ones. I'm also a huge fan of the 16 x 16 scrapbook paper holders from the craft store since they hold mini paint bottles well. I have a cart that holds six of those. I'm going to need another cart. But when I put the paint away it's put away.
In general it's a lot easier to find stuff if you've put like with like. All the sandpaper? In a plastic paper holder with a sliding lock. All the Dremel accessories? In a container. All the bases? In a container. It's work up front but if you look at it, really look at it, it's a one time pain. Then it saves you time when you're looking for where you put whatever later.
I also have storage cubes with doors. I lucked out getting those because they were discontinued. They fit perfectly into my current space and should fit well into my new space with some planning. Right now they're handy to where I paint so I can keep things I use a lot in there. In plastic storage bins or loose-ish in other kinds of containers. I use a pill bottle and a pilsner glass for the second rate and terrain paint brushes. They're contained.
I'd have a lot more trouble if I hadn't done this up front. Even with doing a partial organization it's saved me a lot of time and things are already together. When a box has 'bases' written on it I know all the bases are in there when it comes time to unpack. When a box has 'air' written on it I know it's everything I need for the air compressor. There will be other things in those boxes but I know what the important things are.
Another thing I found from all this is just how much I have of particular kinds of items. Between you and me I have too many of some. I know I can clear one of those when I get settled. The other will take more work and planning. But until it was all gathered up I didn't know the extent of what I had. Having it scattered put it out of mind. Having it put in one place lost me that luxury.
So just how well organized will the new space be? I'd like to think it's going to be decently organized. What's not in plastic containers will get there. The things that can be reduced will be. I will have more storage space so more things will be visible for me to use. I'll even label the containers if I get all kinds of ambitious. Those are all future considerations. Right now it's a matter of a rough organization of at least getting things into the boxes that will go into the same room.
I'm lucky in that I'll have more rooms for things now. With my hobbies I outgrew my two bedroom apartment resulting in a dense accumulation that was difficult to use. I worked hard to use every possible bit of storage space and I think I did well. The problem with that was getting to most things. I also had things on the shelves that I wasn't going to use but had the space to put them. That happens. That's going to happen again. By having more rooms and separating two big space hogging hobbies I'll have actual room to work. That's a luxury I haven't had for well over a decade.
I'll end this as I started, begging you to take the time to organize what you have. Plastic works better than cardboard in my opinion because if something bad happens that involves water your stuff has a much better chance of coming through undamaged or at least minimally damaged. Wipe it off and put it back. Cardboard, not so much. There's enough variety of sizes and shapes of plastic containers that you can find what you need or at least what will work well enough. You don't have to do it all at once. But please, please, please do it.
