Spent the entire day yesterday doing what is usually a fall chore...the huge cleaning out and organizing of the log shed. It's where we store all our tools and sundry of life that we use all year, usually in haste, in the middle of a work day and then just throw it back where we thought we found it. Then my sons come out and work on a project and put them somewhere else or just drop them where they were and they also store their hunting and fishing gear here, among other things. All my canning supplies, all our implements for homesteading are usually kept here, with smaller portions of them kept in the spare room off the back porch where I keep canned goods, small appliances, bins of tools and sundry.
Each year we eliminate more and more things, which always feels great. I love to streamline work spaces and chores to make them more ergonomic, which saves me time and effort, so this project is always one of my favorite of the year.....hard and tedious work, but some of the most rewarding.
One cart load went to Good Will and the Habitat store, one cart load went to the dump, some things went home with the boys. The rest was more organized than the previous year...each year I try to do that more and more. Mom and I are both getting sketchy in our short term memory, so finding things we thought we'd remember where they were is a frustrating, time wasting siege. This year I bought white and red wash pans at Dollar General for $3 each and used these to catalog different categories of hand tools, garden and yard supplies, house repair items, pet supplies, etc. I also had picked up laundry baskets at Good Will this year for this purpose....at $3 a piece, they make for great and sturdy storage bins.
Son #2 put up shelves out of L brackets and scrap lumber to hold additional items....they were the perfect size for the chainsaws and other saws and also smaller bins of things. I used Sharpies, big and small, for labeling right on the bins or on fluorescent orange duct tape labels. Some bins were large enough to warrant a posterboard label with a list of items....these labels were covered with clear Gorilla tape so they wouldn't get damaged over time.
Now...if we can only be good about putting things back where we found them.
I love walking in there right after it's been cleaned out and organized....such a lovely sight to see. Can't stop looking at it!
Today....building benches out of old, unwanted bedsteads. I have three to build but will likely only get one or two done, if that. I'm still crippled up from yesterday's marathon, so moving slow and taking a lot of breaks.
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