Pony herds in not a lot of space?

[Storybelle]

I'm about to move in two short weeks (TOO SHORT. I had three weeks notice that I had to move. THAT IS NOT ENOUGH NOTICE) and I'm wondering what you guys do when you live in houses that don't have a whole lot of room for your collections.

To clarify, me, my 300 strong herd and a good few playsets will be moving into a small flat in the centre of a town with my boyfriend, his collection of magic cards, stabby things and board games, on top of our other housemate's already existing bits and pieces.

I don't want my herd to get damaged or shoved aside while we live there. What do you guys do to store ponies and playsets when you have not a lot of room? Do you have any good tips or ideas for displaying as well? I'd like to have a small display out and possily rotate it but any and all ideas welcome. 

[KottonKandy]

Oh I'm glad you posted this. I recently got my collection out of storage and I've been trying to display as much as can in such a small space. It'll be interesting to see what others come up with.
Right now, I've got one small set of shelves dedicated to my girls, and a lot of the baby ponies are small enough to kinda sit in random empty spots on other bookshelves. The only kinda maybe clever thing I did was place a sheet of foamboard on top of my rabbits cage. Turned it into another small shelf where I'm able to display a couple of the lunch boxes I have and my show stable.
I've thought about suspending my windy wings from the ceiling to save shelf space, but I don't really have a lot of those to begin with, so I'm not sure if it would make much of a difference.

[TheBeatlesPkmnFan42]

Hmm... My pony collection is limited to my bedroom as I live with my parents still. It's a decently sized room but not super huge. I have images of my collection setup (ever so slightly outdated as I'm constantly switching things up recently) here in this Imgur album. As you can see quite a lot of ponies fit on each level of the white shelf due to its size, although this does lead to the ponies in the far back (especially on the very bottom level I hide my G3s that aren't in as good of conditions down behind there) not being as visible as the ones in the front.

So I've got two main shelves (the white and pink ones) in addition to a small hanging shelf for my McDonald's ponies, a table for my Ponyville playsets and smaller G3s, and just as of today I got myself another small hanging shelf that I've moved my 4.5s onto.

So a combination of a large shelf (or two) that can fit a lot of ponies per level on, and then a couple smaller hanging shelves should be a decent way to fit in a lot of ponies, if you're willing to risk the large shelves leading to the ponies inn the back not being as visible (perhaps you can use things for the ones in the back to stand on?).

In terms of normal ponies I have 70 G1s, 9 G2s, 86 G3s, 17 G3.5s (incl. Newborn Cuties), 56 G4s, and 3 G4.5s, for a total of 241 normal ponies in my herd. Then more space taken up by plushes, some fashion sized ponies, Ponyville & Blindbag size ponies, plushes, etc. For an idea of how many ponies I have fit in my room.

[Strawberry Swirl]

I've fit as much as I can in my room, which is thankfully spacey enough to have ~100-150 ponies in it. The rest are in plastic totes.

Can't wait to get them out. ;u;

[Haruna]

I'll be following this topic! I'm also moving to a slightly smaller space in about a month and I've been wondering the same thing.

[Stormness_1]

Small spaces are tough. My old collection/spare room got turned into a nursery, and while I have the space back now, I can't bear to use it again just yet, so my collection is still packed away for the most part.

I have some merch out (books, DVDs, one-off pieces) because it's low maintenance, and all of that stuff lives on two small, but deep shelves in the wardrobe next to my desk. I have found in the past that using merch such as books and DVDs, old VHS etc as risers for various things is really useful, as firstly it's a matching colour scheme, VHS/DVD's have clear plastic covers so no paint/ink transfer onto hooves or ponies that fall over,  it works as adjustable height risers, and provides more storage. You don't always have room for another tote just for books and DVDs when you occupy a small space. (at least I don't - I have 2 huge totes just devoted to merch already, several for ponies, and now I need space for more totes of baby things until we find our rainbow) I also use decorative boxes for accessories of various gens, so I use those as risers too. It does make it a bit tough to access things when you want to get at a particular book or accessory or whatever, but so is a tote, so it doesn't bother me any more than having it in storage.

I've also seen those acrylic squares put to good use too, having ponies both inside and on top, adding to the available space if you're going for a more minimalist, yet still very well-stocked display look.

Definitely stand your ground with displaying some of your collection though. Of course there will be compromise, but you need space for elements of you. Self-expression is very important for people to be happy!

[goddessofpeep]

I have a *massive* collection(at least 2000 ponies, possibly up to 3000+, all gens, plus accessories and merchandise), and a *tiny* amount of space, so the storage issue is a big one for me.

I take advantage of *any* storage space I can.  They make some really nice under bed bins that are perfect for storing decent quantities of ponies.  Some of them even have lids that are hinged in the center, so you don't have to pull the entire bin out all the way to open it.  I am always on the lookout for new areas I can stash a bin, and new bins in new sizes that will fit in unusual or small areas.

I also store a lot of my ponies in bins in the closets around the house.  They're stacked in the closets, so it's a hassle to get at the bottom ones, but that's the way things have to be in this house.

Due to the large quantities of bins, and the huge hassle it is to search for something, a very good organizational system is a must.  In my collection, all bins are labeled with a specific bin number AND a post-it note listing all the different sets/item categories inside, and if the bin is full or not(in case I get more ponies from that set).  I no longer have to pull out a bin(or multiple bins if it's in a closet) to see what's in it, or if it can fit more ponies. 

I also have a binder I made from a bunch of checklists I found around the internet.  I've written in extra information into each pony entry including: condition, how many of each pony I have, bin number where it's located, and guidebook page number for the pony set(I'm bad with names, and I like having access to photos I can look at offline).  Trust me, it's a hassle to do this, but it's an even BIGGER hassle to try to find that one pony in all those bins without some kind of guide.  Making that binder has saved me so many "tear apart the house, and ransack the bins", moments I can't even tell you.  Now if I want a pony, I go to the binder, look up the bin number, and get it.  Easy!

As for display, I am lucky to have one small room to myself to display what I want.  It's not much(it's a tiny, oddly shaped room with very little open wall), especially considering my collection, but it's very nice.  I display less than 10% of my collection.  For displaying in a small space, I recommend the following things:
1) Look for ways to go up.  Usually shelf space is a premium, but often times you can add more space by adding things that will give you more height.  Playsets are good for this, as are smaller shelving units, and risers.  If you have an Ikea nearby, the store is filled with options!

2) Look for any available flat space.  Dressers can be great places to set up a playset for displaying ponies.  Tuck a few ponies on your desk to decorate near your computer.  If you have an entertainment system, maybe a few ponies could join the party there.  Have a lot of books and bookshelves?  Ponies look great with books as a backdrop, and the books themselves can function as risers for a second layer of ponies(shelf height permitting).  Jut avoid any flat space that can damage ponies(near heating vents, or anywhere in a kitchen - kitchen grease is horrid to get off of bodies and out of hair).

3) Get creative.  During the magnetic G3 era, I stuck several G3s on the fuse box in the bedroom.  It looked like they were climbing the wall.  Have a bunch of Summer/Windy Wing ponies or Pegasus ponies?  Get some fishing line and hang them from the ceiling!  There are lots of options if you're creative! 

[lostpony]

I live in a small trailer so I have put up pony-sized shelves in an increasing number of small places.  A few of the shelves are spice racks and wire shelves intended for holding soap etc in a shower.  I have a bit of think oak plank maybe 1/4" thick salvaged from an old dresser going across the top of the entry door making the 5 inches of height there into a pony shelf and there is a dowel across the front of that shelf so the ponies don't walk off the shelf and onto the floor to get stepped on.  I have some odd 2 inch deep single wire shelves from who-knows-what original application that are pretty wide and I've picked out two places across the top/front of areas too small to be useful for anything where I will put them for more pony space.

I have a set of overhead cupboards above my bird cages that are going to have their hinged (to swing upwards) doors replaced with sliding glass doors and the space inside will be shelved with glass shelves to display my G3 styling ponies, G4 Zillas and other large plastic horses.

I keep my non-displayed ponies in cardboard boxes from the post office that are all the same exact size, these are free you just grab them, the right size to hold one layer of G1s standing up or a heap of little ponies and I also use office file boxes for the larger horses etc.  I have no solution yet to my really big horses from battat size and up, and I plan to go through my storage locker and throw out a lot of stuff to make room for more ponies in there.  I'm moving soon too and I'm going to lose my 8x10 storage shed and the little space outside where I have a lot of plastic horses so i feel your pain!

If you are going to have wall space available I notice a lot of curio shelves intended for plates or that kind of thing that are not too thick that can be used to put pony shelves on the wall, and if you can put screws in the walls there is usually a lot of space above doorways etc where you can put up a lot of pony shelf space made from thin wood with dowel railings.  Custom-built small shelves that fill in these spaces are a great way to go but, you have to make the shelves.

Good luck!  And please share pics, we want to see how it turned out.

[Leave a Whisper]

Floating shelves are great

[Storybelle]

Oh I'm glad you posted this. I recently got my collection out of storage and I've been trying to display as much as can in such a small space. It'll be interesting to see what others come up with.
Right now, I've got one small set of shelves dedicated to my girls, and a lot of the baby ponies are small enough to kinda sit in random empty spots on other bookshelves. The only kinda maybe clever thing I did was place a sheet of foamboard on top of my rabbits cage. Turned it into another small shelf where I'm able to display a couple of the lunch boxes I have and my show stable.
I've thought about suspending my windy wings from the ceiling to save shelf space, but I don't really have a lot of those to begin with, so I'm not sure if it would make much of a difference.

Hopefully it'll help both of us out! It's difficult having beautiful collections and no space to show them off.

I haven't bought any furniture yet as the flat is just generally very oddly shaped and I want to move in before I make any definite purchases but I thought I should get some ideas. I just about managed living at home but sharing limited space with two boys will make it harder for sure.

I think that might be something I do too. Tiny bit of room, put a pony there. Ooh, this will make a shelf, collection of G3s  Anything to help.

Post Merge: July 25, 2017, 02:18:41 PM

Hmm... My pony collection is limited to my bedroom as I live with my parents still. It's a decently sized room but not super huge. I have images of my collection setup (ever so slightly outdated as I'm constantly switching things up recently) here in this Imgur album. As you can see quite a lot of ponies fit on each level of the white shelf due to its size, although this does lead to the ponies in the far back (especially on the very bottom level I hide my G3s that aren't in as good of conditions down behind there) not being as visible as the ones in the front.

So I've got two main shelves (the white and pink ones) in addition to a small hanging shelf for my McDonald's ponies, a table for my Ponyville playsets and smaller G3s, and just as of today I got myself another small hanging shelf that I've moved my 4.5s onto.

So a combination of a large shelf (or two) that can fit a lot of ponies per level on, and then a couple smaller hanging shelves should be a decent way to fit in a lot of ponies, if you're willing to risk the large shelves leading to the ponies inn the back not being as visible (perhaps you can use things for the ones in the back to stand on?).

In terms of normal ponies I have 70 G1s, 9 G2s, 86 G3s, 17 G3.5s (incl. Newborn Cuties), 56 G4s, and 3 G4.5s, for a total of 241 normal ponies in my herd. Then more space taken up by plushes, some fashion sized ponies, Ponyville & Blindbag size ponies, plushes, etc. For an idea of how many ponies I have fit in my room.

Gosh, that's just beautiful! You've managed really well to display so many.  Is that all your collection or do you have more stored away?

I'm definitely going to look into shelving on the walls - if I'm allowed, that is. I'm unsure of what the landlord allows us to do just yet but I hope a few shelves up out of the way to display some G3s and my princess ponies is ok.

Post Merge: July 25, 2017, 02:23:04 PM

I've fit as much as I can in my room, which is thankfully spacey enough to have ~100-150 ponies in it. The rest are in plastic totes.

Can't wait to get them out. ;u;

LOL, saaaaame but that's going to be a while for me.  Not until we can afford our own house when we move out of our hometown...so in a few years? My poor ponies!

[Chrissytree]

I've got very limited space too.
There's a fitted cupboard in my room and I started out with a shelf unit in there but it wasn't using the space well enough - so I got my Dad to put in custom shelves that fit the playsets. Show Stables on the floor x3 with a bunch of carry cases on top (which I love! and have over 20 of.) Perm Shoppe next up with a layer of ponies on top.

The Baby layer has the Lavender Dream Castle - side note, if you disassemble the castle, have the drawbridge part against the back then the right side over on the left in a corner (with a little padding under the non-turret end) with the turrets together and the flat wall behind one of them, then you create a space saving way to display it. Also baby ponies fit the balconies perfectly! My Lullabye Nursery is there too with all the twins in the satin slipper sweet shoppe. The babies are on display mostly.

Next level is the pink dream castle with sub shelves. Top bit that isn't easy to get to is where I keep all the small playsets and accessories along with most of the paradise estate (12-14 ponies to a room.)

It's a tight squeeze and I'm struggling to find room for about 10 variants I recently got over the last couple of years. I still have space above the paradise estate rooms on the top shelf! But that's about it!

If you have the skills to custom build a shelving unit to fit what you need and the space available I find that's the best way. I've been able to attach my shelves to the wall but it's possible to make a free standing unit

[Storybelle]

I'll be following this topic! I'm also moving to a slightly smaller space in about a month and I've been wondering the same thing.

Good, hopefully this will help a few people get some ideas. I've never had to worry about space too much so when I heard I was moving I was like 

[shelvesofwhimsy]

I have a decent amount of space, but its still small for my collection. One thing I did recently for my G4 ponies was order a nail polish wall rack from ebay. It was around $20, and was able to fit my entire collection! It freed up 2 cube shelves in my shelf, and it is very thin against the wall https://www.instagram.com/p/BVcfAepDSBi/?taken-by=shelvesofwhimsy

I would also recommend those thin picture from shelves from ikea. You could have a number of them around higher in a room and have your ponies stand there
 
I second what others have said about using whatever is laying around as risers I've used post office boxes, checks, rement boxes, mac n cheese boxes and some shoe boxes  If the pattern is very obvious I just wrap them in computer paper.

I also saw recently that someone I follow bought one of those larger cube shelves from Ikea, and then used it as a room divider! It was cool because the back was full of toy "butts" but it still let some light into the room

[TheBeatlesPkmnFan42]

Gosh, that's just beautiful! You've managed really well to display so many.  Is that all your collection or do you have more stored away?

Pretty much everything, though I have most of my accessories in a box since I don't really display those. The plushes just hang out in the corner between the two shelves. I need to think of some way to stack them so you can see them all.

Sometime I'd like to get something to elevate the ones in the back so they're more visible.

[Storybelle]

Small spaces are tough. My old collection/spare room got turned into a nursery, and while I have the space back now, I can't bear to use it again just yet, so my collection is still packed away for the most part.

I have some merch out (books, DVDs, one-off pieces) because it's low maintenance, and all of that stuff lives on two small, but deep shelves in the wardrobe next to my desk. I have found in the past that using merch such as books and DVDs, old VHS etc as risers for various things is really useful, as firstly it's a matching colour scheme, VHS/DVD's have clear plastic covers so no paint/ink transfer onto hooves or ponies that fall over,  it works as adjustable height risers, and provides more storage. You don't always have room for another tote just for books and DVDs when you occupy a small space. (at least I don't - I have 2 huge totes just devoted to merch already, several for ponies, and now I need space for more totes of baby things until we find our rainbow) I also use decorative boxes for accessories of various gens, so I use those as risers too. It does make it a bit tough to access things when you want to get at a particular book or accessory or whatever, but so is a tote, so it doesn't bother me any more than having it in storage.

I've also seen those acrylic squares put to good use too, having ponies both inside and on top, adding to the available space if you're going for a more minimalist, yet still very well-stocked display look.

Definitely stand your ground with displaying some of your collection though. Of course there will be compromise, but you need space for elements of you. Self-expression is very important for people to be happy!

My only other collection that will majorly battle for space is my several hundred books. A lot of those will be put in the attic for storage but I would rather not do that with my ponies. I'm in England so I don't have to worry too much about heat up there but I'd rather not take the risk.

I intend to! My boyfriend flits between tolerating my collection and viewing it as trash that collects dust. But I think the same about his board games so we'll have to come to an agreement. Luckily, it's a three bedroom flat - not very big rooms but he is having the other, smaller spare room for a man cave. His computer desk and films and so on. This gives me a bit more space and control over the main room.

I'm definitely going to think about some shelving if I can get away with it. I'm not going to get anything until I move in and make up a plan to make the use of the space. 

Post Merge: July 25, 2017, 03:37:09 PM

I have a decent amount of space, but its still small for my collection. One thing I did recently for my G4 ponies was order a nail polish wall rack from ebay. It was around $20, and was able to fit my entire collection! It freed up 2 cube shelves in my shelf, and it is very thin against the wall https://www.instagram.com/p/BVcfAepDSBi/?taken-by=shelvesofwhimsy

I would also recommend those thin picture from shelves from ikea. You could have a number of them around higher in a room and have your ponies stand there
 
I second what others have said about using whatever is laying around as risers I've used post office boxes, checks, rement boxes, mac n cheese boxes and some shoe boxes  If the pattern is very obvious I just wrap them in computer paper.

I also saw recently that someone I follow bought one of those larger cube shelves from Ikea, and then used it as a room divider! It was cool because the back was full of toy "butts" but it still let some light into the room

That is an absolutely fantastic idea! I may have to steal it. I don't have tons of G4s so a smaller one perhaps but it's such a neat, attractive way of showing them off. And if I don't fill all the spaces, it's an excuse to buy more ponies... 

I love Ikea. Terrifying, confusing place but good stuff there. I'll look there first for shelves. I'm interested in using the kallax cubes if I have the space. I saw a really cool picture on pinterest where one of them was used as a small seating bench, with the other shelves on either side. Dual purpose is the way to go. 

Post Merge: July 25, 2017, 03:52:10 PM

I've got very limited space too.
There's a fitted cupboard in my room and I started out with a shelf unit in there but it wasn't using the space well enough - so I got my Dad to put in custom shelves that fit the playsets. Show Stables on the floor x3 with a bunch of carry cases on top (which I love! and have over 20 of.) Perm Shoppe next up with a layer of ponies on top.

The Baby layer has the Lavender Dream Castle - side note, if you disassemble the castle, have the drawbridge part against the back then the right side over on the left in a corner (with a little padding under the non-turret end) with the turrets together and the flat wall behind one of them, then you create a space saving way to display it. Also baby ponies fit the balconies perfectly! My Lullabye Nursery is there too with all the twins in the satin slipper sweet shoppe. The babies are on display mostly.

Next level is the pink dream castle with sub shelves. Top bit that isn't easy to get to is where I keep all the small playsets and accessories along with most of the paradise estate (12-14 ponies to a room.)

It's a tight squeeze and I'm struggling to find room for about 10 variants I recently got over the last couple of years. I still have space above the paradise estate rooms on the top shelf! But that's about it!

If you have the skills to custom build a shelving unit to fit what you need and the space available I find that's the best way. I've been able to attach my shelves to the wall but it's possible to make a free standing unit

Thank you for discussing playsets! I got a lot of ones that I wanted last year, including a Dream Castle in need of a make over and the Satin slipper sweet shoppe but I'm so worried about not having any space for them. Hopefully I can find a way to display one or two and make them pretty with some ponies. 

I don't but my boyfriend does. Maybe if we have the space I can persuade him to make me some shelves - just enough for playsets and some ponies.  I'd love to have the Paradise estate out properly one day but for now it'll have to be condensed.