why it's good to lose something

i am wrapping up a year long restoration of an off topic car and wanted to do the front end alignment. most of the stuff i restore has straight axles so i do not use my turn plates very often, matter of fact i have not used them since i moved my shop 7 years ago but have seen and moved them since [i think]. i went to the cabinet, where i found, the magnetic gauge, and the scuff gauge for setting the toe but the plates were not there but the cabinet was a mess so i cleaned it. then i proceeded to look/clean/organize all the spots in the shop i thought they could be...nothing.
this is in a 3 story, 1500 sg. ft. per floor, 110 year old barn. first floor is my shop, part of the second floor is my parts room, and the 3rd floor is storage.
when i have parts that need to be put in the parts room i place them on the stairs going up. well the stairs were full of parts to the point it was getting hard to walk up or down so i decided to put stuff away and in the process find the turn plates. of course there were a bunch of boxes [6] of stuff already in the parts room that needed to be put away so i put them away...still did not find the plates. put the stuff away on the stairs...nope!
decided to look in the file cabinet, this lead to getting rid of a giant stack of catalogs going back 10 years. between the speedway and moss motors alone it could fill a paper box tightly. no plates.
here is the thing, and the point, i did find spring shackle kit for the '37 chevy truck i am hot rodding for a customer, my paint code book i thought i lent out, the service manual for my truck, my staple gun, an inch pound torque wrench and the coolest exhaust tip with jewel inserts that would be perfect on a 61-63 t-bird.
i am going to keep looking after lunch but has this happened to anyone else?

 

well i have not had anything to drink...yet....so it must be the age thing...or too much crap.

 

My problem is I misplace parts,look everywhere and can't find them.

I started on the wagon about 10 years ago,,built a new shop during that time,sold my business and piled everything I didn't sell in my old shop.

After spending way too much time looking for parts I got mad at myself for misplacing numerous pieces and had to replace them.

Now that the car is up and running I am continuously finding those misplaced parts,,,swap meet stuff now! HRP

 

It seems that the only time my shop gets cleaned is when I'm looking for something, or moving. Looking for something that I lost is easier than moving.

 

My garage/shop/parts storage ha become a hoarder's nightmare of stuff piled upon other stuff and simply finding a garden shovel is an adventure in suicide-inducing madness. Your story reminds me of a friend of mine and I when we finished one of his cars up and were getting ready to start another. The building had become so crowded were were putting cars together in the equivalent of a one car parking space soooooooo... in about a week we were back to a fairly open space the size of 3 parking spaces and access to the tools and surprise, finding all those 1/2" sockets and open ends and pliers we had lost so long ago.
I read your piece and am motivated to get busy and recover my space from myself. Thanks alot.

 

.....sounds like you just got too much crap.....I know that whats happen in my shop

 

Yup, lost my sandblaster someplace. Didn't use it for years but when I went to get it from the upstairs of the shop it wasn't there or anyplace else I have looked. That was months ago and I still have found it...

 

Wow! You found my T-bird exhaust tips. I lost them so good that they ended up in YOUR shop. I'll send you my address so you can ship them to me.

Doc

 

Most of us could be the poster child for the television show hoarders. HRP

 

Accumulative damage from exposure .

 

No ! It's Not Good to lose something, Unless you find something better while looking.
Can't find something as large as A Sandblaster ?
I 'll Bet it went where alot of My Stuff went............

"Stolen"..........

Smokey 2 (Still Smokin', Alot )

 

I'm glad I'm not the only one.....the sure sigh that I will find something is when I order a new set of whatever I lost and receive it in the mail....most having to do with specific reproduction hardware.....(that shit gets expensive)

 

Don,I see you subscribe to the old adage "A place for everything and everything in it's place"

I know you do all your work in you garage and have to share space with your children's bikes and yard tools..I'm impress with how organized you are. HRP

 

You mean "a place for everything and everything all over the place".

 

Can't understand why you have not found them!

 

When I moved into my house/ shop last fall, I purposely organized all my parts and put them away in my barn, and Im not trying to reorganize things again so when I am ready to build or sell I can grab the stuff and go...In fact, Ive decided recently Im only keeping a handful of parts, and my 65 Comet. The rest is up for grabs...

 

I do that too.

 

Yup me too. That shit happens to me so often, so I started to get organized, I keep going back to where it use to be and can't find it because I "organized"! It's a freaking lost cause.

 

What I hate is loseing something. I start looking for it, then the phone rings. When I hang up I forget what I was looking for.

 

Where's the remote????.....

 

you guys have no idea, imagine finding that part after hours of search in the most OBVIOUS spot possible. i have literally taken close to an hour looking for a tool that is in my hand.

 

Gotta lay off the gunja!!!...

 

Love this Thread

 

I clean my garage once a year.
It's just like Christmas

 

Last time I cleaned mine out was in '92...

 

well, spent the rest of the day looking, found a brand new wire harness for my dads '49 gmc. i do a lot of work for guys that buy and sell old vehicles that always come with lots of parts that the previous owners wanted to do and the guys flipping it have no interest in paying to have done and don't want. so they leave the boxes with me. that is where the harness came from, it had been twist tied to an original harness and i thought it all was old until i started to clean.
somehow i ended up with parts to rebuild a '41 pontiac 6 cylinder. i have never owned one or worked on one
i went to the third floor to look around and made the mistake of sitting down to rest my back. it has been raining hard and the barn has a tin roof...a nice soothing sound....too soothing.
ok to tally up my days work I took a couple pails of garbage out, found a couple good things, lost a flashlight and a pair of cutting pliers, did not work on the challenger [or any other billable job] took a nap BUT STILL DID NOT FIND THE DAMN PLATES!
will try again after dinner.

 

...in order to find what you are looking for you have to be hunting for something else...

 

First goes the eyesight, then the memory. Maybe its time for a bar code inventory / location system.

 

I won't say that my garage is a real mess but I left the door open one day and two women from a Red Cross Disaster team showed up wanting to know what kind of storm had hit it.

I'm missing several old photo albums with photos of car shows in Texas, Washington Oregon and my trips to Bonneville among other things that I haven't seen since the last move.

The garage needs a complete empty out and only have the tools and equipment and parts for the current project put back in it. I need to take a week off when it warms up a bit more and spend a couple days of it doing exactly that.

I did build a little receiving hut for UPS and Fedex and the mailman to put my packages in though so they won't get set over the gate where my daughter's dog destroys them. Now to work on the garage.

 

Yeah, I live in a wherehouse; where the hell is this, where the hell is that!


At least I haven't lost my sense of humor.