Stopping The Madness

Where did I lay that down at? Oh yea . . . there’s the pencil. No wait . . . I was looking for the drill chuck . . . it was . . . wait . . . is it here? No . . . hmm . . . oh look, there’s that thing I was looking for last week. Now what was I looking for again? Oh yea . . . wow . . . this would be great for something else I was doing . . . it would just take a minute to do. (Four hours later) Now what was I doing again?

Yea . . . that’s my garage experience in a nut shell. I got a Shopsmith from my dad (that was my grandfather’s) and suddenly I joined the rank of “woodworker”. I’ve had a motley mix of projects in my garage from time to time . . . from car things, to bicycles, and now wood things. I have a welder and cut-off saw, but not enough metal working stuff to quite get started on my (newest) project car—a 1974 MGB convertible (chrome bumper). The Shopsmith gave me a plethora of new gizmos and gadgets to keep track of, and I don’t quite have the feel for how the workflow should be. BUT, the biggest problem is my garage is a complete shambles with half started projects, bits and pieces, and things shoved where they can fit.

I made a modest attempt at taming the craziness a year+ ago, when I went to a local office surplus place and purchased some hanging file cabinets. They were replacing my open faced shelving that I had transplanted from my “dream garage” that I had at the lake house. (3 car garage—10+ foot ceilings) The problem now is I have a wide variety of storage devices and things spread all over the place. I also have an “eclectic” (at best) variety of do it yourself type work benches and tool storage places. Add a liberal amount of clutter/junk/accumulation from the past 10 years of home ownership and you can pretty well imagine what I’m dealing with.

The new plan is to get a storage pod of some type and simply empty the garage out entirely and start from scratch. We’ve been thinking on when our schedule would allow this to happen, but sometimes you just have to draw a line in the sand and say “ok, here’s when it’s happening” and go from there. We know March/April/May will just be a blur, and then we’re into the summer months, so right now we’re seeing how quickly we can get a storage pod and start from there. The only thing we probably can’t work around is the MG, as it’s garage bound for now. Someday it will be weather tight again, but in the mean time it’ll have to be a item we plan around. We’re going to question each piece of storage and/or item going back in to see what use it really has and if it’s not necessary, it’s getting the boot.

This will definitely be an adventure. I’m already planning out things that I can see going away. My old cabinet stereo has been one of those “oh, I can’t give that up” type things, but in the interest of space efficiency, I can see ditching it for a better solution. I’m not ruling out anything from the chopping block—well, besides the Shopsmith for example. I’m trying to eliminate frustrations where ever possible. Wish me luck!