Art & Inspiration did some cleaning in the shop today

No Judgement just a thank you...
There are several Garage Threads and they're all intriguing in their own way...But seeing Hotrods buried in the confusion of Collecting and losing some or all sense of organization...can happen...Its totally common and @nochop you have nothing to worry...if anything get the tarp off and giver a little breath of fresh Fall air...You're pretty much on top of it if there's anything to deduce......

Or is Dedeuce...

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And, @Stogy , thats a great lookin car, and no, my shop is not the only garage here. This shop is 2 bays plus a third stall for machines. Sadly, usually only one bay is empty for maintenance, and the other stall has a stalled project or...you guessed it, another mess

 

You have WAY too much room around your mill..

 

you aint seen the other side yet!

 

This is Craigslist stuff albeit if scrap value exceeds its worth as a repairable unit that may be the route to go...I mean many times you can buy modern replacements for a pittance of the value they were originally...

I will list stuff for a month and see if anyone can use it then go to recycle...but if its broken that is potentially a big wall...make a staging area for sell items and make a scrap lot outside as its scrap after all...

The way I look at is if i can get 10 or 20 bucks it adds up...and it helps move on and gas up the car AND get a load off the mind...

 

I like to call it organized chaos...Thank you...The Hotrod is my escape...and clearing my space is a mission I'm on right now...is that other stalled project yours and Hamb Friendly...some of these stalled projects are years in the making like 1962...

Kiwi Kev has a busy but very functionnal and intriguing shop...Flathead Tommy...another

 

I'm having an issue with craigslist right now. if I dont hear from them by morning, I have new thread to start, stay tuned

 

There's many sites similar that may be a better fit...with heavy Items I try to stay local or no more than an hour away...its tedious taking pics and putting them up...But getting money is at the root for me...Find out whats wrong with the scale probably a cut cord or plug...I fix stuff and sell it but even then its a battle...Sometimes taking it to a reuse center is more valuable mentally than money...

 

I have started collecting things and putting them in a designated swap meet area. I know my kids won’t want anything, so I figure I will sell this stuff and buy something I need. Don’t ever discount what other folks would want. I have thrown things on the trailer that I would have junked and that’s the first things people want. Baffles the mind…

I don’t think too many folks use CL anymore. Seems like FB marketplace has replaced it.

 

Get a thick one and you won't feel the stuff laying on the floor. In addition, the pad will make a great pillow for when you're laying on the creeper under the car pretending you're working

 

Wow...
You sorta swept and everything.

 

KCHK

 

The local online consignment auction has been my best friend for getting rid of some of my accumulations. I am always amazed what people will pay for stuff that I though was junk. The only problem is I end up seeing things I need when I am dropping stuff off. So around and around we go. It does seem as time goes it seems like I have less clutter and nicer things to boot. P.S. @rusty valley the auction place I go to is not that far from you. PM me for details.

 

I'm pressing onward, how about this cool herringbone gear from who knows what that I saved from who knows what junk pile, pretty cool eh ? Cant throw that out, and besides, i just used it the other day to press out the shafts from some pulleys I torched off some electric motors that got scraped this summer. Yes, the pack rat saves the pulleys, mostly for the neighbors it seems!! anyway, gonna keep on this clean up little at at time.Thanks for the support, kinda like a junk hoarders anonymous meeting

 

Boy! you don't see those herringbone gears very often! Great find! I'd keep it also!
As you can probably tell, I'm in this group also. My biggest problem is where to put the 'good' stuff out of the first 4 x 4 space. Once you get past that, you can put the 'good' stuff from other areas into that first 4 x 4 area! Right!?.......
No wonder it takes me for ever to clean the shop!
You are doing GREAT!!

 

yup gaby, you got it figured out, you just sorta keep rotating the stuff from cluttered area to clean area to clutter the clean area up, then see step one

 

Junk hoarders anonymous. That's funny.

You guys should look into 5S methodology for your shop cleaning. It's a Japanese thing very commonly used in manufacturing and industry. Look it up if you want more details, but I'll give you my take of the basics.

1. Sort
-Pull all the stuff out of the room, area, shop, whatever. Figure out what stays and what goes. Having a clear idea of what you want for the end project will make this step easier. Have a place ready to get rid of the extra stuff. A pallet jack and pallets might be your friend on this one. Then you can start rough sorting out in the driveway and not have to perpetually drag stuff back and forth.

2. Set in Order
-All that stuff you decided to keep? Now you find it a home in your hopefully already empty building. Graph paper with cut to scale paper objects can help you lay this out before you actually lift a finger. Or CAD software works too. Put stuff where you want it. Put up shelves. Get bins. Buy pallet racking and a forklift. Buy a proper hardware cabinet, chemicals storage, toolboxes, etc. Think about your bad hoarding habits and think of ways to counteract them with the way you set things up.

3. Standardize
-Really nail down your system. Label stuff, make shadow boards. Get everything down to a system. The goal here is that once you set this up it should be easier to keep it organized that it is to let in fall into a mess again. Things should practically fall out of your hand onto the right storage space.

4. Shine
-Make it look good. This will motivate you to keep things up your standards. Keep the floor swept and things wiped down. Minimally I try to sweep down the area at the end of the day if I did any cutting, grinding, welding, etc. Walking on a dirty floor is the first step for me to let things fall apart. You may have your own trigger. Find it and stay on top of that one thing.

5. Sustain.
Congratulations your shop is awesome. Keep it that way. Find something isn't working? That's fine. Identify the problem and repeat the above steps to find a way that fixes the problem for you.

Sorry for the long winded post. Hopefully it can help someone. I watched my grandpa work in a cluttered mess of a shop and have done that at times myself. Life is too short to work in a disorganized mess.

 

Well RYNO, that all sounds like a good plan but... I want a clean room, not a new career ! Just kidding, when I was a kid my dad would do similar once a year. Suburban 2 car garage, every spring take everything out in the driveway and hose down the walls, then put it all back in neat and tidy. It was easy because it was just normal yard tools and such, not gobs of old car parts and tools. Dad had one of those flip top tool boxes like a tackle box, a sears tankless air compressor, and an electric drill. Thats it , but it got me started !

 

I have a rule.... the three minute rule
If I can find what I'm hunting for in less than three minutes, I don't have to tidy up and organize. I try to keep it clean but tidy is another story...but I put it back in the same place...usually

 

Tidying up is a losing battle for me !!! I somehow find a way to make a mess very quickly . To many makes and models of vehicles seems to cause a lot of my troubles .
Spare parts for everything , I am a shelf guy , no bins for me ,if I cant see it I forget about it .
Maybe it's time to start thinking out the herd .

 

Keep Chuck Hold.......uhhh I give up...

 

Local radio stations daily classifieds listing. I had to look it up too.

 

To stuff collectors this is a tear jerker...this was an adopted technique at my former aviation job and they staged these in departments one by one and the piles of stuff that grew out of the initiatives usually went right to the dumpster...

I still managed to keep a few drawers loaded with specialty items that bailed us out of trouble should the need arise...

But lean is usually in conflict with those who find comfort in rescuing things of interest...especially if it's a private residence and not a business...and yes the problem arises when you run out of space to function...

I too remember getting quite a mess of things out when tackling a project but the key is getting it back in place upon completion of task...

I was quite good at it and was chosen to help implement lean and worked with a trained Japanese team...

Apparently in wartime Boeing/Douglas they were incredibly lean at that time but over time after the war things became the opposite hence the call on the Japanese as they had lean down to an art...in modern times...

But at home lean does not neccesarily come so easy...but the formula does achieve the goal...so @rusty valley have you found those old parts you were looking for yet...

Tell me what is going to be the first Hotrod/Custom project that will reside in the newfound real estate for a lean production build?

 

Buddy of mine is a full blown hoarder. Barns,sheds,grove at his farm is packed with stuff. He dropped by as I was doing a bit of cleaning in one of my buildings. I had 14 totes full of car stuff ready to go to the scrapyard. He took 7 home saying he had no use for the parts but they were too good to throw away.
I would be happy but he’s 80 years old and guess who is executor of his estate

 

My wife said touch it once too...aint seen it since

 

Anything to buffer irregular impacts to the knees and surroundings will help but not all foams do that very well...some times avoiding the purchase of a dense properly made pad minimizes the gains...

This is not in any way saying the foam you're using isn't adequate, for instance my mother had an old square piece of 2" foam she used that was too soft and provided some but not enough buffering from things that are damaging...

Try those pads out before you buy, they are certainly not all alike...it really matters...

 

Here's a thought: gearhead garage jams. Once a week we all get together in one of our garages. This would be a somewhat local gathering. Say within 100 miles of that weeks garage. The victi...err that is the guy's garage getting a cleaning that week just points to stuff and says what pile it goes into, save, sell, trade, throw out, etc. The guys who help that week get first dibs, dibbing order tbd. Within weeks we'll all have gotten rid of the stuff we don't need and we've picked up new stuff for our collection.

And yes I see the problem. We won't actually reduce the stuff we have, but a lot of it will be new to us...

BTW take a look at the 2nd thread of mine, you'll see that I am giving some thought to our collective collection conundrum. So far that's all that's been done, but it's a start.

 

Hey, RV;
Thanks for the pics. I've finally seen a place that's worse than mine. . Made me smile. I'm feeling slightly better now, thankyouverymuch! .
Iffen I only felt well enough & quit hurting to actually do something... ;( .
Marcus...

 

As a carpenter I partnered with a man who was anal about organization. His truck box was had everything in smaller tool boxes, he could get to whatever he had quickly. I was much different, my box had several cat litter pails filled with
misc. tools, left over fasteners, etc. Usually I knew what pail to look in, but might have to paw thru it to find what I wanted. I cannot tell you how many times I had something we needed that he didn't because it did not fit in his boxes.
I will say that the job sites we worked on together were the cleanest job sites though. I am now retired, he is specializing in High end bathrooms, and all his reviews mention how clean his job sites are, he does not just sweep he
vacuums daily.

 

Checking in for my daily junk hoarders anonymous session, JHA...Got the press area done. all the steel stuff still in the area is required press stuff, and stock for the lathe just behind it. I have always wanted to make a shelf that would hang on the side of the press to hold all those necessary bits of stuff, but not happened yet. Its ok, the stuff is rarely in the way, but could be tidied up some more with a proper shelf. On the press, you will see what most folks call a torch, the blue thing, but in fact that is a fly swatter. One of my favorite sports, even leave the door open on purpose so i can hunt at night while killing time on the net. Its like an old ww2 war movie, when you get a direct hit, the wings flash and go poof, and the enemy plane spirals down in the death crash ! really...good entertainment. So, the press area is done, what next? The work table scares me to death. may be better to avoid reality and go after the lathe and "drill and mill" cabinet, and the clutter on the floor? Typical of an addiction, try to avoid the truth, and the truth is ....that table is going to have to be delt with.