Shudder, the day of reckoning has arrived...

1719 Views 6 Replies 5 Participants Last post by sometimewoodworker, Oct 9, 2021

DesertRatTom

Discussion Starter · Oct 4, 2021

I've been working slowly on a honey do project to enclose part of the large patio with lattice. Have been having health issues for awhile so by slow, I mean snail's pace. A few hours when I feel pretty good. It's getting close to done now and I realize that I now have to put the tools away. I've mentioned my wife's cleaning frenzy strategy, stuffing things into boxes and putting the somewhere, anywhere. Well, I found all those boxes...they're all sitting on tables, chairs, etc. out on the patio. So my day of reckoning has arrived. I have to put it all away.

Oh, the larger tools will be fine, but there are a bazillion small items, which have always been difficult to deal with for me. Yeah, I have a number of small containers in racks to put stuff in, but I'd need half again as meany to put all the little bits and pieces away, but then I'll never be able to find them again.

What's worse is that I now have a LOT of cutoffs and bits and pieces, most of it would make a quick fire, but it's fire season and my neighbor cut down a huge pine during summer and one spark will certainly set it off. So I guess I'll have to cut my scraps up into small enough pieces to chuck into trash barrels. These get ground up and turned into mulch at the dump. I found out that pine mulch stops weed growth, by the way. But not sure I want to do the grinding. They used to give it away, but not any more.

This is actually just an idle complaint because I know that about two three hour sessions will give me an organized shop again, plus a number of annoying splinters.

After I clean up, I'll take a picture or two of the project. It's meant to keep plants out of the intense desert sun. I suppose I could work out a simple way to close it off to keep plants through the winter too, but at my current working pace, it wouldn't be done til next summer.

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mgmine

· #2 · Oct 4, 2021

I had to laugh while reading this. I set my goal today of cleaning the shop and building drawers to hold stuff that currently sits in boxes. But an hour and a half has passed and I still haven't made it to the shop. A lot of the mess is from scraps of wood leftover from a large trellis I built a month ago. Similar to building a boat in the basement I discovered that the trellis was too tall to fit through the basement door. Well, now I'm going to shut off the computer and actually do something.

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Barry747

· #3 · Oct 4, 2021

Packrat syndrome. I have enough cutoffs in buckets, baskets and bins that I could probably build a tree. Worst is a set of tiny drawers in a metal carrying case that I've had for around 50 years. I use it for small items like washers, hook and eyes, assorted brads, that sort of thing. I decided to try to clean some of it out and one of the drawers contained rubber faucet washers. I had a plumber in to replace a garbage disposal. I offered him the washers. He laughed and said he threw the last of his rubber washer away several years ago. Yeah, I still have them in the same drawer. Sigh. I think it's a mental issue.

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sometimewoodworker

· #4 · Oct 7, 2021

I feel the pain.
for small items I use sets of plastic draws.

For wood cutoffs I just built a set of storage bins and have a burn box beside it.
You are lucky that you only need a 3 hour cleanup session, I need more and better storage so I can get stuff off the horizontal storage that should be a surface sanding station, a table saw and 3 workbenches/assembly tables.
however my current project is coming along nicely, though I’m running out of off cuts and sheet material to make drawers from and am only making an average of 1 drawer a day due to the vaccination slowdown, and a lack of roundtoits

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DesertRatTom

Discussion Starter · #5 · Oct 7, 2021

sometimewoodworker said:
I feel the pain.
for small items I use sets of plastic draws.

For wood cutoffs I just built a set of storage bins and have a burn box beside it.
You are lucky that you only need a 3 hour cleanup session, I need more and better storage so I can get stuff off the horizontal storage that should be a surface sanding station, a table saw and 3 workbenches/assembly tables.
however my current project is coming along nicely, though I’m running out of off cuts and sheet material to make drawers from and am only making an average of 1 drawer a day due to the vaccination slowdown, and a lack of roundtoits
View attachment 399781

I can spare you a few of mine...

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Dejure

· #6 · Oct 9, 2021

So far, on my shop to do list, I figure I have somewhere around fifty drawers an forty bins to get to. . . .

mgmine said:
I had to laugh while reading this. I set my goal today of cleaning the shop and building drawers to hold stuff that currently sits in boxes. But an hour and a half has passed and I still haven't made it to the shop. A lot of the mess is from scraps of wood leftover from a large trellis I built a month ago. Similar to building a boat in the basement I discovered that the trellis was too tall to fit through the basement door. Well, now I'm going to shut off the computer and actually do something.

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sometimewoodworker

· #7 · Oct 9, 2021

DesertRatTom said:
I can spare you a few of mine... View attachment 399785

Thanks, they, recovering completely from vaccination slow down, and getting back from drinking zero coffee to my usual 400ml per morning have energised me to finishing all but 3 final draws. So now I am down to the last 3, then it’s deciding exactly which colours of shellac stain to use for each set of 3 drawers. They will get a final top coat of polyurethane

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