I am notorious with those that know me, for taking care of everyone else and ignoring my own things. This has compounded itself over the years in the shape of the complete and utter mess in my shop. I will work on projects, finish and deliver them but never pickup the debris they made in the shop or organize what I have in there. This has come to somewhat of a head since I am out of room. You can not even walk into the large doorway in the shop. Seeing that I now need to work on a motor for me, it seems that cleaning my mess and fixing my motor have the same level of urgency and therefore I should do the one that will make the other easier. So it is officially time to clean up the shop.

Clutter

This is part of the problem. Too many projects. Just from this picture I can name 25 projects that i have pieces for . This picture is older so I have actually finished one of the major ones. The front driveshaft on the blue cart and the transmission sitting on the white table top are both finished and back in my truck. But the old time compressor that needs to go on my newer tank and the roll of pex that needs to connect from the cabana to the shop are not done. Half of the plywood is now a large shelf in the garage but the other half needs to be part of the wall in the garage. With no limit to the amount of projects, I need to focus on just cleaning where it will help get the other project going and will be a launching point to keep it clean.

My focus for all day Sunday was to clear in front of my workbench on the back wall. Somehow when a friend of mine was moving out of town and left me his gorilla rack and a bunch of old hardware, I decided that since it was the only open part of the shop it would be ok to set it up in front of my bench. This has always bothered me since I use nothing on that rack other than charging batteries since my dedicated battery chargers are stuck behind my toolbox that covers up another part of the bench!

It literally took me 6 hour of breaking down boxes, re-arranging junk and dismantling the shelves, but I can now get to my tool bench. It is completely covered in junk (weird). I will start on it next, I need to install a pegboard behind it and get some more storage sorted. But I feel so much better. I will be sore as hell tomorrow, but it is worth it.

After 6 hours of cleaning i can walk from the front to the back of the shop.

It may not look it, but this is MUCH BETTER

skullet