Thursday, October 3, 2013

The Shed Clean Out and Reorganization

Back to the shed renovation and clean out.  A few days ago we talked about the painting of the garden shed. At the end of that post, I shared a picture with you of the condition of the inside of the shed just prior to the painting project. Today I will share some additional pictures of the disorganization which had taken over.




So, we started with this dirty, dingy little garden shed.




And we ended up with this freshly painted, beautiful garden shed.




Then there was the disorder inside.  It was a slow accumulation, over the years, as so often happens. These shelves were crowded and unstable.  This picture does not accurately portray it, but the pegboard supports were the wrong size.  When we installed the pegboard and shelves we used shelving supports that we already had.  They were too large for the holes in the pegboard, so we had to drill the holes larger where we inserted the shelf supports.  It never worked like we expected and the shelves always leaned forward.  You would walk in and expect the whole wall of everything to come tumbling down.




Then there was the baker's rack.  I bought this baker's rack shortly after I moved into Crest Avenue to use in the kitchen.  We knocked out the back wall of the kitchen and installed a sliding glass door where there had been a wall and a old wooden door with glass panes and a storm door of inferior quality.  When we did that, there was no room for the baker's rack, so it was relegated to the shed.  And it worked well for many years.




The stacking plastic containers from Crate & Barrel.  I bought many, many of these to help bring organization to the basement originally.  These made their way into the shed.  They were useful as a place to hold different gardening items, but ultimately were impossible to access due to the overcrowding.




Inside the doorway, immediately to your left, was where I stored the shovels and rakes and post hole digger and various hedge clippers, loppers and trimmers.  I bought this plastic tool rack, again, right after I moved into the property in 2001.  It served a good purpose for many years.  But its usefulness had come to an end. It was wobbly and took up too much valuable floor space.  It had to go.




To the right when you entered the shed, was another pile.  I had attempted at one point to get some control over this situation by hanging some of the garden tools on pegboard.  But the area around the pegboard was completely out of control.




Finally, a stand-back photo - a landscape style photo of the mess that was before me.  Getting control of a situation like this can be daunting.  You look at it and ask yourself, "Where on earth do I begin?"  My answer.  Right here. Just start pulling stuff out.  Make three piles - "Keep", "Throw Out", "Don't Know Yet".  After you get it all cleared out, it goes much faster than you may think.  The "Keep" pile is just there. You don't do anything until you are ready to start putting the shed back together.  The "Throw Out " pile requires getting some trash bags or boxes or both and loading them up.  The "Don't Know Yet" pile is what takes the most time.  But don't get bogged down in it.  You will know what you want or need to keep and what can go.  And once you get started going through it, it will go very quickly.  Once you are done with that, sweep out the shed and then set about putting it back together.

Tomorrow we will take a look at my reorganized garden shed.  I think you will be surprised to see how well it turned out.



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