Okay, I've alluded to it multiple times in this blog, but I have never explained and or shown visualizations of it.

And, no, this is not about my invisible friend.

No, it's about how I store my Bionicle canister sets. Picture time.

As you can see, I have alot of ol canister sets set back in a shelf in my closet. You may not be able to see it very well, but that's the upper corner of my closet in the picture, so these are stacked up pretty high off the ground. And when I close my closet doors, it's like they aren't even there.

Now, I've been doing different things with my sets involving displayment over the years. For the most part, they used to be in pieces strewn out across the floor. But when I have them built and I'm not MOCing, I've had them swarmed across my desk and dressers, taking up all available room. As my collection grows, the available space diminishes, until I had to start thinking about what I've gotta do with them. The solution my parents always take when they storm through my room is throw them all in my bucket of system pieces... thus mixing them in and making it a nightmare to rebuild them. For my larger sets, they have to befall this fate if not on display, since they don't have any individual containers to seek refuge in. But the canister sets have their... well, canisters.

The Toa (Mata) were marketed to be able to store in their canisters (as were the Bohrok, who were even better because they were more compact.) So I started stacking in my rows of canister sets. To the far left, you can see the outermost Mata canisters, then comes a row of Bohrok and Kal canisters, stacked three-four high. Then come the Nuva, Rahkshi, Metru, and Vahki. Since I only had a few Hordika and Visorak, and their canisters stacked on each other neatly, I compressed them into a single row. Then came the Piraka, and then a massive stack of Inika canisters (because the canisters themselves were massive).

The Baraki posed a problem. As you know, their canisters are a horror to stack onto of each other. So I decided to lay them down on their sides, and stack them up that way. The pile is still unstable, so I needed to wedge it in with a stack of Metru and Phantoka canisters (which also don't stack up neatly, so they were laid down too). Just off the side of the camera, I'm also stacking my Mistika canisters, which actually stack like all the others. Finally. All in all, the top of my closet has eight years of Bionicle sets stored away up there. Whew.

Not all the canisters are full. Around my room, I have some of my larger sets on display. Keetongu, a Bahrag (don't have enough pieces to build both... lost a couple of essentials at one point) Vezon (but not his spidery mount) and a Tarakava. Mixed in with them are some of the cooler of the canister sets (Hewkii in both Toa forms, Thok, Mantax, Lerahk, a couple of Toa Mata) and a few smaller sets (Dekar, Kulagi, Takua) and Slizers (original eight). They don't quite make up a swarm as all my sets used to do, but they look nice with a little space in between.

Which brings me to the title of this topic. I will be leaving to go back to school in a few weeks (yeah, we start late) and I'm looking at what sets I'll bring. Last year, I had a lot of sets, like all three Phantoka Toa, and my shelves seemed too cluttered. This year, I'm thinking of bringing just Thoka, Lewa (Mata) and Pohatu (Mata) and one of my custom Mini-figures. So as I got them together, I organized the rest of my displayed sets and stored away some of the others. I might pull them out later during breaks to MOC with, but now they're all packed away and ready to gather dust (at least for the canisters) Now I have to move on to the rest of my room, which includes electronics and paperwork and a generally big mess.

Woo hoo.