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Neatness, VS Slob

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bj:
   Just to prove that I can do organized work,  (occasionally)
   Generator room is fairly neat/organized.
   S.E. shop is fair, lots of projects underway.
   N.E. shop is a pigsty.
   West of shop is worse---hence no pic

hiker1:
Built my little shop...so I would have room to work in and less costly to heat...now it's begaing to get crowded as well.! Even thou 20 loaded of stuff I never use went to the dump ! Nice shop their BJ..gen looks great...looks like your doing some vavel work on that v8 on the stand..always nice to have a warm shop in the winter.......

DJ:

In my last place I had the sheds and the yard an absoloute tip.  I saw it every day and the wife and kids complained about it several times a week and somehow, I never saw it.
When we sold the place and went to move, It hit me, like a ton of bricks.  I can't describe the feeling other than " at what point did I loose my freaking mind and let things get so out of control?.  there is seriously no exaggerating what I did and the $#!+ I had.
I have seen those hoarders on TV that collect old news papers and bottle tops and broken Umbrellas and have it spilling into the front yard and house and thankfully I wasn't that far gone but after all the years of watching shows on them, I realised what we had in common.

As a mate said, it wasn't so much hoarding justnever throwing anything out... if there's a difference.

I started taking ute fulls of stuff out every night and putting them in skip bins around the place the night they were to be emptied.  There was an industrial area near me I staked out so I knew when the bins were emptied and which ones were never full.  By geez I filled a few over the course of a month. I'd do it after hours so when the bin owners came in the next day, they had an empty bin as normal. Here it is all a contracted service so empty or full, feathers or lead, they pay the same.

That made a slight dent but it wasn't going fast enough. I called in the steptoe metal collectors as I couldnt be damned taking it to the scrappy for a few buck as is all you get for steel here now.  First guys took 1.4 Ton.  2nd guys took 1.9T. That wasn't counting the geek guy that took all the old IT gear I had which MUST have been another ton at least.  the rest filled a 30M2 Skip.
That a 20Ft shipping container with the roof cut off. I just got the rest in there nicely with careful packing and regular compacting.  That went a smidgen under 6 ton.

I reckon I burned at least a ton of wood and old furniture.
I cur it up with a circ saw or chainsaw and threw it in a 44 gallon metal drum ( burn barrel ) that I put a strong blower in the bottom of swirly everything around to get a fire from hell that would have got a steam train up to pressure in an hour.  I was feeding that thing non stop for more than 8 hours a day
for a fortnight.  Time I finished my yard and the idiot neighbors looked like it had been snowing from the ash. Knew the mongeral wouldn't dare say anything.

There is no comparison to what I had to what's shown above but I did learn my lesson.  My god I learned!  It's taken me months to get over questioning myself over how I let things get like that AND the embarrassment of it as well. I'm astounded any of my mates that came to help me with it still even want to know me. No matter what they could have said to me I don't thing would have been any harder than what I deserving was on myself .
The only explanation for what I did was mental illness and I stared it right in the face. Or rather got slapped in the face by it like a lump of 4x2.
It was certainly a learning curve as to how someone can loose their mind not only without knowing it but never once thinking they were anything other than fine. Now when I hear of some wacko on TV, I have a better understanding of how screwed up you can be without having a clue.

I was so disturbed by what I had done I took myself off to a shrink soon as we got in here. 
I bared my soul, shed some tears, told her I'd never let it happen again and asked WTF was wrong with me?
She said you realise what you have done, you deeply regret it, I highly doubt you'll ever do it again, nothing to fix at this point.
I wonder?

Thing now is, I realise I am just an untidy bastard. Try hard as I may to make things neat, I'm terrible at it. I just don't have the gift of neat in me I'm sure. I see friends complaining about things they have that are untidy and I'm thinking that looks like something I'd put effort into tidying up.
I think I'm going to have to live with that now. I'll NEVER get the crap I had, matter of fact I have gone a bit the other way and chucked stuff out Later really regretted but better that than the other way.

I used to go round the factory areas and pick stuff up that " Would come in handy."  I still go for my afternoon weekend cruises and pick stuff up but ONLY what I have a use for in the immediate future and Know exactly what I'll do with it. I have really turned that around. Couple of times the Mrs has been with me she is saying " What about that?" and I'm the one lecturing her that we don't need any crap we do not have a specific and imminent need for.
If It's not for the current project or a couple ahead already with concrete plans, I am not touching it.
Once I thought a good afternoon out was coming home with a load of stuff, now I think it's coming home with as little as possible and ONLY what I am going to take and do something with then and there.

I do find it really hard to be neat though. I find stuff is very hard in garages to organise. There is a lot that just wont go neatly on the several grands worth of new shelves I have invested in.  Metal is hard to rack up in any sort of orderly fashion when it's all different pieces rather than like the metal yard where they have 50 of every specific size and it all goes together nice.
I have made progress with nuts, bolts, screws, nails and all the other small pieces like connectors etc with a load of partitioned case's. I swear it takes me longer to go through all the cases and find the one I want than having crap everywhere did but so be it. If I know I have it I do find it and where it is on the shelf rather than hunting all over the shed to find it 6" from where I was first standing.

Still a LONG way to go, most of the shed is still unorganised from the move as is some of the house but at least every bit done is done right and that takes time. 

I looked at my "Planting area"  beside the shed where I start my seedlings etc today and keep all my potting mix, starter trays etc.  I thought I tried to make that neat but it's a $#!+fight and always will be. Nature of the beast I think. Tomorrow I'll be moving it all round the back of the shed which will be a pain in the backside spot  being in the hot sun unlike the shade where it is now but it will be out of sight from the house and that's the main thing. I have enough timber and steel to probably put a bit of a roof over the area for shade and protection so that's what I'll do.

Going to extend the 9x9M garage so I can put all the machinery in one bay and lay it out like a show room. everything with a place and in it's place. Also want to set up a corner of the shed for the lister. I want that to be exactly like the picture of the generator above, Perfectly neat, tidy, clean, uncluttered. Something I can show off with pride and illustrate my turn around.

As for heat, I'm going to put in an oil burning stove/ heater for that which will undoubtedly make the shed far warmer than I'll ever have the house.
Part of the extension is for a toilet and a shower as the sewer pipe is right there and easy to connect so might add in a small man cave area for good measure.

Anyway, probably not a lot to do with this thread in I was way beyond slob but have come back to that level and am very happy with it but, just doing some self therapy admission and taking responsibility to make sure I NEVER forget what I did and go back to it.  There is untidy which I am convinced is normal ( only guy I know with a neat shed has OCD!)  and then there is true mental illness like I had.

I do still stick by the thing though that if you do have a neat area all the time, you probably are spending too much time on the aesthetics and not enough on the actual projects. 

When your clean up is in the multiple tons, you have lost the plot though! :0(

Pete:
DJ I completely understand. I am in the process of moving house too. I thought that I had the junk down to a pretty low level, but in being brutally fierce in what I take and what I get rid of, I have taken 5 trailer loads of stuff to the tip with at least 2 more to go.
The problem is that the mind rules too well and says things like, "Oh that will come in handy",  " I could fix that one day". "Those are really expensive, I will never find one of them at that price". etc ad infinitum.
Now I am downsizing from a 10 metre by 6 metre shed to a single car garage. My tools are going to become great friends squashed into that space.
So I can relate to your story. I am glad that I am not the only one.
Then again, I know of plenty of what I call " Bower Birds" ( birds that decorate their nests with detritus) around the place , and I am positively  Zen compared to them.
Cheers
Pete

bj:
  Thanks Hiker---heads on the bench, and block on  stand are actually two different projects.  Shop is
coming, slowly.  Used to be a hog barn, hence the sloped floor.
   DJ--- been there, hauled around 30,000 lbs of blocks heads etc. last year.  Good rebuild-able stuff, but
if nobody is beating down the door for it, why keep it?  The house is neat and tidy, so I can't blame my
better half.  The problem is mine.
  Pete---I don't allow myself to think "that will come in handy"  anymore.   

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