Another area of great interest to me (which is obvious if you’ve ever seen me) is eating delicious food. And preparing delicious food. As we modelers often look to develop techniques and skills to make the hobby more enjoyable, so does cooking involve learning skills to make cooking more efficient. One of the cooking techniques that I’ve found useful in BOTH cooking and modeling is the concept of mise en place.

In French, mise en place means “putting in place”. As it is used in preparing food, it is the concept of gathering all the ingredients and tool needed to prepare the dish or meal before starting to cook. And implicit in that process is that you take to time to think through the process to know what items are required.

How many times have you started a project (let’s say scenery) like this: You pull out the ground foam and start to sprinkle it on the area. Then you need some diluted white glue, so you put down the shaker and go get the box that has the white glue, but then you need to go to the sink to add water and DARN! you need to add a drop or two of dish soap to reduce surface tension, and the soap is upstairs. So you trudge upstairs to get the soap and mix the diluted white glue. Then you decide that you went to mask off an area so that it won’t get scenery on it, but the roll of tape is in the garage, so you make another trip upstairs. Then you want to add some burnt grass foliage to tone down the bright green and “Where did I put that burnt grass applicator?” So you stop everything and rummage through all your boxes of scenery material until you find that parmesan shaker of burnt grass stuff.

By the time you get any scenery work started, you are exhausted and ready to spend your night watching Netflix instead!

With just a little bit of planning, you can think through the task, and gather the materials that you need before you start.

Mise en place can be seen as an organizing philosophy that you can apply outside of the kitchen to almost every aspect of your life.

This is not a new or foreign concept to us. When you set aside all the things you need to get out the door in the morning, that’s mise en place. When you follow an evening routine with your kids (e.g., bath, books, bed), that’s mise en place too. When you gather your modeling tools and material that you need to start or complete a new structure for the layout — yup, mise en place.

An important part of mise en place is cleaning up as you go, and completely cleaning and organizing your tools after the project is completed. This makes it easier to find the tools when they are needed for the next project. This is especially important in a commercial kitchen, where multiple chefs are using community cooking tools. Similarly, in the hobby this post-project cleanup and organization can be important if you host work nights or have multiple people working on your layout. Even as a lone wolf modeler, having the tools put back into their proper location make it easier to start the next project, whether it be tomorrow night or next week.

Author Dan Charnas says it’s about working clean (Work Clean is the title of his new book all about mise en place):

Mise en place is not about making things tidy, it’s not about things looking clean. It’s about being able to work clean, which implies motion. The system has to be returned to order. So it’s not just about creating order, like, “Oh, look how I arranged my desk,” it really is about, “I’m going to move through all these projects, but I’ve also made the commitment to myself that when I’m done with this project I’m going to wrap it up.” I’m either going to deliver it or I’m going to put myself in a position where when I resume it, everything is in a place for me to pick it up. Because that’s going to save me 20 minutes, I can use that 20 minutes to do other kinds of work or I can use that 20 minutes to be with my kid and read him a story.

Give it a try next time you head to the basement for a night of work on the layout. Take a moment to think through the task, gather the proper tools, and watch the magic happen!