Cleaning Out The Workshop

We finished Norma's lean-to garden shed (with the oak laminate floor!) on the side of the workshop and I built four deep strong shelves in it. It was now time to start moving stuff in. The lawn mower that we never use anymore now that we have a "Lawn Guy" found a home against one wall under the shelves and all the long handled garden tools got hung on the long wall across from the door. One shelf was dedicated for garden chemicals and such.

We then started bringing stuff in from the workshop. It was tough knowing where to start! There were three tarps that were laying on the floor because all my shelves are full. We folded these up and they went on a shelf in the garden shed. This exposed two five gallon containers partly full of house paint from last summer. Some of this will be used to paint the garden shed when we get a chance, probably tomorrow if the rain holds off. They went over to the garden shed beside the lawn mower. This is working out good! We also found three bags of concrete products that had hardened in the high humidity and were not only useless but too heavy to throw out with the garbage. They went up on the slope behind the house where they will become "rocks" after the rain finishes the job of hardening them.

Next came literally dozens of smaller paint cans with a little "touch-up" paint left in each of them, all labeled as to what room they were used in. Most of them were years old and useless. The garbage rules here says they will take paint cans as long as they have no lids on them and are empty. So what to do with about five gallons of useless paint? I dug a hole amongst the horsetails that decorate the back slope and poured it in. This is probably highly illegal but I know from experience that nothing will kill those horsetails! Anyway, it was all latex. If it does kill them, I will be doing it more. Another of Norma's shelves was filled with the more recent paint cans that were still good.

That emptied everything off the floor of the workshop and after the workbench got cleaned off, nails and screws organized, hand tools hung up and the floor swept, it looked pretty good. It is now a workshop again.

Our house sitter wanted to do this herself this winter so she would know where all the tools that she will need to do some work on her motorhome are but she simply did not know how bad it was! This will make life a lot easier for you Rae and I think you will have your hands full anyway with work on your rig. It will need a lot of reorganizing again by the time we leave so you will not be lacking for chores.