No real point to this post, just venting a little. I've been spending
the last two weekends trying to clean out the shop so I can get the race
car in there. I've got less than one month before the first race of the
season and about 1.5 months worth of work to do on it before then.
Generally people would not describe me as a pack rat, in fact they would
tell you I'm sometimes "wasteful" because I toss stuff on a pretty
regular basis. Stuff that many people would put into the "it could be
used for something, someday" category. Anymore though I'm beginning to
wonder if I'm slipping. I started in one corner of the shop and worked
clockwise around the building, going through every cabinet, shelf, box
etc trying to weed out stuff that I would likely not be using. One run
to the dump and one run to goodwill and I can maybe see light at the end
of the tunnel.
There is still three large tote containers that have "eBay" stuff in
them... yeah, I've been going to list them on eBay for the last two
years... Those totes are going to goodwill. There was the huge box of
old kitchen pots, pans, lids, containers etc that has been waiting for
me to go thru them and see if there was anything that would work good in
my rv... yeah, seems like we've been cooking for last umpteen years with
the cookware that is already in the rv just fine.... that big box went
to goodwill yesterday. Then there was the auto parts, reloading
equipment/supplies, and ammo all mixed up in the same large cabinet. Put
the ammo in a dedicated ammo locker, and made separate cabinets for the
parts and reloading stuff. You get the picture...
For awhile now I've had a rule to not use any storage containers that
were not clear so that you could see what is in them without opening
them up. This has worked out well for everything from small items to
larger items. I've standardized on the clear plastic totes with the red
lids from HD. These are nice because they are of uniform size, stack
compactly when empty, and stack nicely when full. Not to mention I can
see what is in them.
Of course while I was working on all this, my wife gets the idea to have
my son use the leaf blower to clean the driveway off. We have two leaf
blowers... do you think even one of the damn things would start? Of
course not. Guess who has to stop and fix them? I just get so sick of
having to move three things to get to the one thing I need to use.
Sometimes I feel like I spend 50% of my time managing my "inventory" of
"stuff", 25% of my time doing maintenance/repair on either the house or
the various mechanical things around here, 5% of my time bitching about
it on an email list, and only 20% of my time working the actual projects
I want to be working on! ;)
Ok, I fell better, thanks for listening. :)
BTW, my wife is not going to be happy when she sees the stack of race
tires that I moved from the shop to the garden shed...
Wayne
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