<rant>

My workshop is a 15' x 20' space with a bench and a bunch of wood tools. Over the last 25 years, I've added benches, cubbies and all little spaces to store things.. many in the rafters. But even with this, "planned storage" I find my shop has the ghost-of-projects-past laid all over the place. A scrap bit of wood here, a tool left there.

So, today, I'm cleaning up. I start on my bench... pull off a small cup with a few screws, nuts, washers.. you know, the little bits you save at the end of a job and toss in there for later. I put it on my tablesaw.

Then, I move down the bench, I find a bowl of more bits... and another and another. I found cans, jars, envelops, baggies, even a coffee cup (I wondered where that went to) all with "crap" (technical term). My bench could not hold the containers, I just started tossing all the bits into a five gallon bucket. I got it to about 1/3 full. Amazing all the little trinkets that I saved and for no good reason.

Then, I started going through it. Little baggies with two screws and a wall anchor... you know, the crappy little ones that come with a wall mounted curtain rod that are good for nothing. I had DOZENS of these... and FLAT HEAD WOOD SCREWS. I HATE flat head screws. Why I even saved them is beyond me. And bent screws... or screws that the philips bit filled in with liquid nails or some other drech. Screws that required an Allen wrench to screw in.... probably a pull out from some pre-fab shelves from the 80's.

I pulled out POUNDS of flat head screws and those worthless screws in the baggies.... threw it all out.

I live within 5 min of Ace Hardware, Home Depot, Lowes, Menards.

Why did I keep all this? No more... I'm done. So, who's with me! Get rid of all that useless hardware!!!
<\rant>

But I did find this nice brass screw... ooohhh Shinny!

faz

Organization is the key of course ... and I mostly had a system.

I'm not talking about getting rid of unique parts... I'm talking about NOT SAVING crap.

I have bins of casters/wheels, cabinet hardware of all kinds, hinges from the smallest to the largest as well as my "trade kits": Plumbing, Electrical, Painting/drywall and Flooring. Makes doing a project very convenient.

My beef (with myself) is that I kept a ton of screws that were absolutely USELESS. I don't have any "enemies" but if I did... these are the kind of screws that I would not put in their houses either.

Good wood screws, I have organized by size from 1/2" through 3". Washers, split washers and all flavor of bolts/nuts are in their nice anal retentive bins.

But really... flat head screws. There's a reason that I pulled flat head screws out of a piece of furniture... because, I replace it with a same sized Phillips head screw... but I kept it... WHY OH WHY DID I KEEP IT!!

I've never gone out of my way to purchase flat head wood screws... but my peanut butter jars, coffee cans seem to be full of them.

At one point I was laughing like a mad scientist tossing these into the 'pitch pile' (btw... it was recycled not in the landfill).

faz

I knew this would come out and honestly, I'm too embarrassed about what my shop has become. Actually, it's worse than when I started... because everything "fluffed up".

When growing up, I had a neighbor that had about 50 babyfood jars (y'all remember when baby food came in jars ) all screwed to the shelves. The thing was, I was like 8... and I could look up and see exactly what was in each jar. He on the other hand was really tall... about a full foot higher than the bottles. He had to severely crane his neck / squat to see anything.

faz

Tell it preacher - I'm with you there!

LOL!
faz

I kinda like my setup.

I have a dust collector for sawdust/wood chips in a small closet off my shop. The room is sealed except for a single large hole that I fit a furnace filter over. Air+ sucked in filter, clean air returned through the filter back into my shop.

The dust collector mostly gets wood chips but a lot of dust goes in there too. I have a few hoses off it. One goes on the bottom of the tablesaw ... the other one can attach to any device or be set up next to the tool.

The fine dust that comes out of the dust collector bag is picked up by the furnace filters.

I looked into a room filter but the amount of dust in the air is pretty trivial at this point.

When I sand, I have a box that has a hose collar on it; dust gets sucked into that.

I'll add some pics tonight.
faz

Ok... so the plot has thickened. I continued my efforts going through the deep-dark recesses of my workshop. I just cannot believe what I found.... MORE SCREWS!!!

This time I took pictures for all you "pics or it didn't happen" folks.

This is all the items found over the last two weekends. Every time I found something.. into a bin. Note, this is just what was in the bottom of drawers, boxes, cans (you'll see some of the 'enablers' to the OCD. Today, I separated everything into piles I still need to sort all this to the proper location (or pitch... found MORE EVIL FLAT HEAD WOOD SCREWS!!!).

Wood screws
WoodScrews2 (resized).jpg
WoodScrews (resized).jpg

Bolts... NUTS! Missed a spring.... you'll see below.
Bolt (resized).jpg

How many times I said, where's that bit... found-em!
Tools (resized).jpg

I don't know why I like to save springs, but I do. I cannot imagine why. I think I've used one spring out of my spring bin (it's about 10 times the bulk of these).
Spring-A-Ding (resized).jpg
Another favorite for me is to pull magnets out of things. The little magnet surrounded by the crappy plastic anchors is super strong.. strongest of the lot. The magnet on the spindle was a prototype core for my son's science fair project. He made a generator.
MagnetLand (resized).jpg

No clue why I have all these locks, but at least I have the keys to go with them.
Lock-ness (resized).jpg

Baggies of screws... so many and more baggies of crappy little screws from what-ever.
Bags! (resized).jpg

These I would call "enablers" of my destruction! Some were even empty... inside, another container
Enablers (resized).jpg
faz