BellaOnline Forums Home and Garden Organization Organizing my workshop

I have this sort of lean-to area in the back of my driveway. It's filled haphazardly with recyclables and wood and pieces of insulation and bins of camping gear and whatnot. It's a terrible mess. I am finally starting to pull out the recyclables and stack the lumber in a way that makes some sort of sense.

My plan is to keep chipping away in this area. I have to be careful, since this is where the black widows live. I have to try to remember to wear actual shoes, not sandals, and wear work gloves.

So here is my plan, not in any order:
-Pull out the steel recycling
-sort and set aside an area for bottle recycling
-Figure out how to put some kind of better floor down. maybe gravel or sand. Right now it's full of this terrible muddy dust. it needs a floor of some sort that is less nasty.
-make work a work space for sorting gear before and after trips, to place my gardening and construction tools around and potting stuff.
-Install some form of lighting in there. It's super dark since it's really just open in the front.
-an electrical outlet would be nice too.

I am kind of at a loss for how to organize and manage all these catagories in there.

Any ideas or comments would be very welcome.

Dear Jilly -

That's fantastic news, it is wonderful that you're making progress! I would start by removing and getting money for the items in there that are ready to go - that will be a wonderful first step!

True, and that is what I am doing. Thank you. I do want to write out a list though. Lists make me feel safer, as if i have a plan.

So in this spirit, do i take everything out (once the recyclng is gone) and put in a fresh floor of some kind (heck even straw), or put that off til later and get another category organized?

Yuck - it's a wet and chilly day here in the high desert. I think i will wait before bringing my steel in for a nice day, since the activity is outside and will take some time.

I think i will pull out the rest of my steel, my copper cabling and the aluminum cans today, and get them set to load up after I drop off this first load.

That sounds good, one step at a time!

I had all sorts of plans to take in my steel pile and such but this poison ivy has sidetracked me. I'll be healthy again soon.

I managed to clear out another corner of the lean to today. Yay!

That is awesome news! Congratulations!

We want to see photos!

Hmmm. One area i had cleaned out is now stacked with small pieces of lumber that Dan put there. Maybe I need to grab him a bin and have him put the scraps in that instead of in a pile. I can fix that right now!

No photos yet. It's still really bad in there.

OK, I just put dan's wood scraps in a little bin to the side, so it's no longer just heaped on the floor. He made a little face at that but i think understood what I am trying to do.

He should be applauding your organizing efforts, not hindering them! He needs to learn the carrot-and-stick stuff

Good for you for your efforts!

It's fine to have before photos, I do that sometimes. Remember when I posted the photo of my office that was completely jammed with stuff?

LOL, he must have thought i was cleaning out the lean-to for him.

I will take a before photo tomorrow. Good point.

Unfortunately a lot of the stuff I pulled out of the lean to is now just stacked all over the driveway. And my jeep is still full of steel. I can't seem to make myself do the run to get rid of the first load - it seems like there are so many loads that I get discouraged.

Dear Jilly -

It is easy to get overwhelmed, I understand that completely. Don't worry about the larger picture. Just focus on an immediate victory. You have free money sitting in the car. That's all that matters. Don't worry about anything else, just think about that one pile of free money, and go get it!

Okay, I did it today! Got $20 for the steel and misc other metals kicking around in my car.

I have another load of steel to take care of, but am not going to work on that just yet. After the new year will be fine. Probably another $20.

I made some calls about gravel, and i think this is doable. If I save all the money from the recycling, I can afford to put down the gravel, and then work on getting proper bins for everything going forward. Gravel, bins, shelves...it's a start to getting the workshop fixed. I need to see if Dan will help me shore up the bad timbers before he goes.

That is so awesome Jilly! Congratulations! That is a great step!

Thank you!

I am looking at recycling bins to organize the different catagories and found these -

[img]http://lh4.googleusercontent.com/public/...sBxHXgR37tXF_Pg[/img]

I would prefer if they were opaque and different colors, so I could instantly go "red - copper! Black - steel! Yellow - brass! Grey - aluminum!"

So i might keep looking.

That looks like a good starting point! I'm sure if you keep your eyes out that you'll find the perfect ones for your task.

Okay, these are getting to be the ones i am thinking about -

Now deciding what colors i want -

colored bins

Yellow - brass
red - copper
blue - steel
black- aluminum
green - non bottle plastic?

there is also an ivory color.

Dear Jilly -

Those look great! I love having bins to put things in. In our closet we have two bins for paper / cardboard and two for "other" because that's how our weekly pickup works. It makes me very happy to have clearly labelled spots for items to go into. We fill them up each week.

That would be a fun project, to weigh them each week and see what is actually leaving the house. I've wanted to do that with trash too, to see what the weight is and to compare it with a national average.

I have extremely little actual trash. Once I have my bins set up I will be excited to start documenting what i actually contribute to the waste stream.

Hmmm. Turns out the shipping on these bins costs as much more bins. I think that is a ridik amount for shipping.

I will keep looking for a source. I bet I find something cheaper that is just as nice.

Today I took several more boxes of glass bottles out from my workshop. Every little bit of cleaning this out helps.

I found some good affordable bins on the walmart website! I think a set or two of these would be great:



Yellow - brass
Blue - Aluminum cans
Green - Steel cans
Yellow 2 - copper
Blue 2 - Aluminum scrap
Green 2 - Steel scrap

That's what I am thinking for now. I get paid for those. I still need something for bottles with deposit, non-deposit glass, non-deposit plastic and then some kind of system for my burnables.

That looks great, a nice way too keep everything organized.

Another road block - walmart.com will only ship these free to the Phoenix store. No way am i driving to phoenix for anything that isn't completely necessary. arg. lols.

last night I took a quick peek in Home Depot and they are having a sale on some bins that are not really what i am looking for, but might work. So I might go with dan this week and pick some up.

-----
In good news, i did pick up some sand last night, finally, for my tool care plan. I put the 25 pounds of sand in a white plastic bucket. Now i just need to find some used motoroil to add to the bucket and I can have a very useful, frugal tool cleaner/holder.
I was glad to finally get the sand. It was about $5.00. I was hoping I could find some for free, but decided for five dollars I could just get this off my plate. So this is an important part of making my workshop ready to go.

I also spent a few hours today pulling a lot more junk out of the workshop. while I really didn't get rid of stuff so much as moved it around, things do look a lot better.

I really can't do much work until i get the gravel flooring in there. The dirt dust is just bad. Step - PLUME! Step - PLUME!

Dan went to Home Depot today and picked up bins for me. I got ten of them in five different colors. 2 of each. They are 20 gallon containers with snap on lids.

They are not really what I was looking for, but trying to find what I wanted in an affordable way was getting frustrating. These were on sale at home depot for around 5 dollars each. I paid for them with money i made by recycling, so it's like my 'business' paid for them.

I don't like that they don't have an 'open' side, but i think I can work with these. Next i need to figure out how to store them off the ground somehow.

They look like this in five colors:

Okay, I got ten of those in five colors from home depot and they are here. So I am figuring out what to put in what color bins. So far I have a list on my white board with ideas like: copper = red, blue = aluminum, black=steel, ...idk, should I go with blue=steel or black=steel? Or teal=steel?

I need some kind of weather impervious labels.

Dan just made a huge mess of his empty containers in the space I works so carefully to clear out in there. When i told him that made things harder for me, he got really upset and called me ungrateful.

Now to get gravel in there i have to either move all his stuff or get him to move all his stuff. I am sad bc i really liked looking in there and seeing all the empty space I had created through weeks of steady effort.

Dan just moved his boxes of stuff to the living room area of the mobile, so it's now cleared out of the lean to. I need to go back in there and tidy up. Not this week - it's not the highest priority today. But it was nice of dan to move out his things.

Dear Jilly -

That is great news - progress is being made! One step at a time. You have space again!