Yet in a barn, let's get real: Entropy is more than a Law of Physics. It's a way of life. My wife jokes that I can tolerate dirt, making a space merely "guy clean," as long as nothing but the unstoppable cats are on our counters.
Yet gradually, ever so gradually, I've come to accept if not love the inevitable clutter of rural life and DIY projects. At the same time, why waste half an hour looking for a tool or the right-sized board when that time could be spent making, fixing, planning? One way to reduce wasted time comes, as with my last post, from a common-sense saying. My mom was always fighting a long delaying action with chaos; with six kids, what else could she do? She would fold clothes as I watched, in wonder. How could that jumble get into such a neat pattern?
"Put like with like, Joey!" And ever since, that has been my rule.
On one occasion, with 20 bored undergraduates unable to hammer nails at a Habitat for Humanity build, and certainly not capable of doing roofing or running a miter saw, I put them in teams, each with a pair of buckets, while a kid with skills and I got on a roof to put down tar paper. My charge: "Go pick up every nail you find, put it in bucket A. All the screws go in bucket B. We'll be saving them hundreds of bucks!" For a few hours, the kids stayed busy. The Habitat folks were amazed when we trudged up with pounds and pounds of dropped fasteners.
This can be overdone. My habits drove my friend Jeff, a talented carpenter, insane when I helped him. I'd clean up the site before he'd finished, and at least once I saw him reach back for some fasteners but he hand closed on empty air.
Cussing ensued. I learned to delay my compulsions.
Now I have a more subtle way of approaching the mess made by projects. Every week an empty hour or two opens up, time enough for something small but not a big item from my to-do list around our property. Sometimes I load up a hundred rounds of ammo, or check a small box off as I restore my old car. Increasingly, however, I turn that spare time sorting tools and materials--there are acres and acres of time, if you refuse to watch TV or whatever movie is now popular, except on your own schedule. And if you prepare extra food on the weekend, then freeze it? You save more hours and money not eating out.
My like-with-like method is simple. I :
- Tidy at least one square foot of space every time I clean up.
- Sort items waiting for their final home into boxes I find (plastic or wood, not cardboard. Need to see what is inside!)
- Move sorted items to the spot where they'll be used. So blades for my two miter-box saws, scattered between two buildings, went to a spot nearest the saw they fit. Same with the arbor saw; all those blades will not fit the other saws. Warning: this can be an endless process if you have lots of tools.
- Put things away, ASAP, when I'm sure (thanks, Jeff) I'm done.
- Toss or recycle anything broken beyond further use. I do scrounge usable bits for later use before I toss the rest.
- Sort small parts (springs, fasteners, etc) into labeled carpenter chests, using that old Dymo label maker to know what is what.
- Stage things: I keep a tool tray out for frequently used tools like my impact driver, fencing pliers, and batteries plus a plastic jar of a few dozen decking screws in a plastic jar. Grab and go! This aligns with the Roman philosophy of making haste, slowly, or festina lente.
- Buy multiple copies of common items and stage them. We have flashlights near the chicken coops, socket sets, screwdrivers, wrenches, and screwdrivers in tool boxes around the place. I keep a wrench and a hammer on the tractor for dealing with balky three-point-hitch fittings or cotter pins.
- Keep the floors clean. This keeps things from vanishing in dust, wood shavings, mouse droppings, snake skins, and more. I now rarely trip on cords or grab a snake (did that once with a black racer on a cold morning; he was torpid but not happy with me).
Meanwhile, back to work.
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