Cleaning and organizing the shop, it's painful

snowman · Sep 29, 2011

I wish I would have taken a before picture, because this is a 5 hour in picture. Actually closer to 8. I had to hoise an Atlas 10x36 into the attic to get it out of my way, what a PITA!!!

snowman · Sep 29, 2011

Next project was to get the press off the ground so I could mount wheels. You can see tha I've already put one set of casters on. These are off a hospital gurney, so I would hope they hold up.

snowman · Sep 29, 2011

Another couple hours and I've ALMOST got the bench cleared off. Also moved a bench near the lathe out of the garage, it's going to the scrap yard. Not enough room in the new layout. It sucks though, I'm moving a pile from corner to corner until I can go through it and dispose of a lot of it.

Got to go figure out how to post on the new classifieds.

A couple more hours and I might be able to start moving the bench, then the lathe, then the drill press and mill.

Keith Krome · Sep 29, 2011

Thank you. I don't feel so bad about my place now.

It really isn't any better (or worse), just know that you're not alone.

My shop at work doesn't look nearly as bad as my "shop" at home.

I'm trying to do better....

snowman · Sep 29, 2011

See, not everyones shop is like the trophy shops put in shop pictures :-)

I work in here!

Last time I emptied my chip pan it was so full I had trouble getting them out. I was motivated by a small part that I dropped and couldn't find.

I need to run to harbor freight and get a couple tarps. Gotta make sure my neighbor is home so he can watch the shop since I'm not able to shut the door right now.

TDegenhart · Sep 29, 2011

There was this fellow named Fibber McGee with a wife named Molly. He had a closet.....

Is this a hobby shop or for business?
Tom

wb2vsj · Sep 29, 2011

Need to start hanging stuff from the ceiling. Plenty of room there.

Ohio_Ford_Farm · Sep 29, 2011

all I can say is WOW and I complain about my place being a mess and that it seams all I do in my down time is clean and try to organize the place.

I wish you the best of luck getting things cleaned up and put away there.

snowman · Sep 29, 2011

TDegenhart said:
Is this a hobby shop or for business?

It used to be a business, right now it's just a hobby shop. It failed as a business because I was always too busy to properly organize it. Now I'm trying to take a couple of weeks and organize everything and streamline the shop.

wb2vsj said:
Need to start hanging stuff from the ceiling. Plenty of room there.

Already am. That's where I store my ladders. I also don't have much that lends itself to being hung.

Got the mill moved out from the wall and started spinning it. I'm finally to the point where things are getting moved to their final resting place. Then I can actually start organizing stuff.

Miguels244 · Sep 29, 2011

I am not by any means a neat freak but that makes me twitch...I get a little neurotic in cluttered work spaces. I lose things and knock shit over.

snowman · Sep 29, 2011

It's been making me twitch and have anxiety attacks for the better part of a year.

I have never had a roll around toolbox, I finally got one. Still don't have it fully loaded and already have about 20 pairs of vice grips and close to 15 crescent wrenches.

Guess I should stop buying those when I find them at yard sales.

I usually keep my work area cleaner, but it got away from me when I went back to school. Working a full time job, going to school full time and still buying crap at auctions because the prices were too good to pass up just didn't work for me.

oldvan · Sep 29, 2011

Perhaps Shel Silverstein could have written a song for such a shop.

SNOWMAN machinist welder rout would not take the garbage out. ...

Half-empty coca-cola bottle, cigarette butts, and missing nickels. Bags of spotted sewing cloth, an old bar stool with broken leg, tangled frayed extension cords, and empty sticky McDonalds cup, welding gas that's leaking out. ...

And so it piled up to the ceiling...

Vice grips, vice vice grips more, SNOWMAN he bought some vice grips more...

In my experience, any toolbox drawer left ajar is seen by the local mouse population as an invitation to destroy things inside by chewing and peeing.

Good luck with your cleanup effort.

scojen · Sep 29, 2011

Not so bad nothing fell out when you opened the door did it seems to me I saw a foot path through there to somewhere. You are not alone, you are not alone.

Scott

Mark Rand · Sep 29, 2011

I'd have stopped at the 5 hour mark. You can see floor. Anything more is just being pretentious. PS I don't show off my shop to people that might judge me... :cheers:

snowman · Sep 29, 2011

lol...i lost my trail. i had a trail from the front to the back, but I pushed some stuff in to it.

Now I can't find a broom.

Really, I'm not being pretentious, I just need to sweep the floor before trying to roll another machine on pipes.

It's almost time to start putting things away and building some drawers and other organizational stuff. Probably not til next week though.

Boris · Sep 29, 2011

I'm not exactly the world's tidest machinist (ok I know where I put stuff, except when it grows legs and runs away and hides

)
, but even I'd drawn the line at a shop that untidy

Or make an anti-gravity device so I could stick more junk to the ceiling

Boris

<<<wondering who'll sell him some unobtainium and some energy focusing crystals :scratchchin:

Bobw · Sep 29, 2011

Snowman, WOW!!! you've dug yourself into quite a bit of a pickle there.

I'm kind of feeling like Martha Stewart right now. Not when she was locked up, but... being locked up in a women's prison, that seems like it would feel pretty good too.

I figure a man with a shop will make a certain volume of mess, the larger the shop the less noticeable the mess. You're squished in there pretty tight, so your alotted man volume of mess pretty much takes up the whole damn place.

When I first posted this pic almost 2 years ago, I thought it was a giant mess, but I can actually see part of the bench and there is actually a corner where I can fit a whole big casting, so I guess it wasn't that bad. That bench is a lot worse right now.

I really think that bench is alive, when I'm not here it walks around and picks up crap to stick on itself. Either that or the tool boxes roll themselves over to the bench and puke out tools. Maybe its a combination and they are conspiring against me, or maybe I could just pick up my crap.

autofrite · Sep 29, 2011

wow! way to make a guy feel better. in my old garage,i used to spend an hour every sunday cleaning the shop.seemed to work well,i had more than a square foot of bench space to work on.

today ,roughly same size garage,2x the storage and benches doing almost no outside jobs and have no place to open my drill case.plus i wedged a 27 studebaker in there also.
guess i will have to take a picture too....wanna race to see who can find the floor first?
lol.

I know once you get it where you want it you will find your work goes way faster. it used to be that way for me.but a remote starter almost every day (evening) for three months burned me out,and i havent been the same since.

dkmc · Sep 29, 2011

I never thought I would be capable of letting the shop get to looking like your first pic.....but it has. And I've been stuck in some sort of mind block
on -getting started- cleaning it. It's been bad for several years now and it really bothers me. But I can't start....I don't know where to.

Thanks for posting this, it may invoke some inspiration if I stare at your pictures for several hours.

dk

snowman · Sep 30, 2011

dkmc said:
I never thought I would be capable of letting the shop get to looking like your first pic.....but it has. And I've been stuck in some sort of mind block
on -getting started- cleaning it. It's been bad for several years now and it really bothers me. But I can't start....I don't know where to.

COmpletely understand...used to make sure the shop was clean once a week, but then something happened. That something was the last industrial auction I went to. I never got that stuff put away. Then I kept dragging stuff home from the scrap yard. The final nail in the coffin was the atlas lathe, it just sat there, and I always had to step over it.

FOr me, the cleanup was motivated by the baby coming. I've been trying to reduce everything. I've probably taken two tons of crap to the scrap yard lately, and that's including my surface grinder. I used to have a mindset of having everything for every possible project, now I've reduced myself to having a bare minimum. In this reorganization, I got rid of a bench. I am also changing my material storage system completely, and finally, all of my power tools are getting little cubbies.

It will probably take me three week to finish this cleaning job, but when I'm done, I'm really hoping it lends itself to being cleaned quickly and easily. I have condensed all of my chip making machines to one cubby. I have condensed my grindiing area. Condensed welding area. I am really excited about getting stuff clean, because I've got a list...actually, a book of projects.

You can do it, you just have to start.

Cleaning and organizing the shop, it's painful

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