It never ceases to amaze me as to how much junk one can
accumulate over time. My garage, aka workshop, serves as a museum of
yester-year. In one corner there are boxes which have not been open in the 12
years since I moved in to this home. They came off the moving truck and were
stacked there, never to be opened again. Next to it, the fishing poles and
various “must have” appliances which failed the “test of need” in our home
(such as the Sno-Cone maker I had to have, used once and retired to the
garage). As the piles expand outward, various woodworking tools and tables seem
to spawn from the mess. To the untrained eye, it would look like a scene from
some post-apocalyptic movie. Yet, in my mind anyway, there is some level of
organization. I can tell show you where the prized Ebony and Bubinga boards
are, where the major power tools are, and where the hand tools should be.
However, as the shop had been mothballed for almost two years, I find that
finding anything often takes longer than the task it was needed for! The other
day, while turning a pen, I set down a gouge only to spend twenty minutes
looking for it. The shop, to my dismay, is no longer functional.
So it begins… the clean out, that moment in time when one
must start throwing stuff away! Better yet, one clears out enough junk that
they actually start finding tools that went missing long ago!
The first day concentrated on one side only. As a result,
two old pieces of furniture made their way to the dump along with several bags
and a truck load of odds and ends. Some items went up into the attic while
others were moved to new homes. The band saw was moved to a temporary home on
the other side, as the router table and table saw looked around in amazement at
the fact that they can now see the floor around them. At the end of the day, an
8 foot wide clear path of concrete led from the house door and out the garage.
As I begin next week on the shop side, I will now have a
temporary holding area for various tools. The shop may still look like a
science experiment gone wrong, however, progress has been made. The next goal
will be to clear out around the lathe and tool box. The shop side will take
some extra time. The problem here is that many of the items will stay while the
furnishings will be replaced. The newly cleared section will serve as a staging
area for that.
I probably should have done this, years ago, when I realized
that the shop would no longer be for handy work. However, sometimes we have to
recognize just how inefficient something is before we change it. Other times,
it just takes us a while to comprehend what we want to change it to. Of course,
there is always budget constraints that must be considered.In my case, it was all three.
Until next time,
Kevin