Why Is This Here?

If you were to visit my shop at home, the answer would be, "Because I might need it someday"....and there are hundreds of little parts and pieces that qualify.

I get it. BUT...

Milo

Um.....

BUT, I never end up using any of it, (or very little), because everything is buried under other stuff, and it's easier to go buy a new part, than to look for the one that I know I already have.

Exactly!

Milo

So Dr....How exactly do I bring myself to rent a dumpster and fill it with things that I have held onto forever?

Every time I start digging, I end up rearranging. It's all good, useable stuff; even broken, it's better than a lot of new stuff.

What can I say? I listened to a lot of stories about the depression.

Same thing here. I can't count how many time and how much money and work I have saved myself by having that odd pile of junk whatever device sitting in a corner or under bench somewhere.

Just earlier last week we needed to pump out a big pond that was getting backed up in one of our pastures.

I had a set of parted out Honda CX160 engines of which one was attached to a large 2" high volume trash pump but was all beat up from having fallen out of the back of a truck going down the road and that had been traded in for a discount off of a new on at place I worked at two summer ago. The other was attached to a pressure washer pump that had froze solid and was also traded in on a discount for a new one. I picked up both just for hauling them away when I worked there.

Anyway between what was still good on the pressure washer engine I was able to replace all of the smashed and missing parts of the big trash pump engine and make one good unit!

HOwever this week the pump blew out its shaft seal and flooded its crankcase with water so I had to get a new seal kit and impeller for it. The OEM Honda parts combined were around $190 but the rebuilt kit for another type of nearly identical pump with a B&S engine was $50.

Anyway for some spare junk, $50, and an hour of my time I now have an nice nearly new 2" honda trash pump that retails for around $600 which at the moment is doing its thing pumping out part of our old stream channel that got bypassed this week!

I agree with keeping useful parts and salvageable "junk. I do a lot of repair, establishment and inventions, and having a lot of useful raw material to hand speeds up the process and often suggests new ways to do something, by having to figure out how to do it using the materials to hand.

I do however periodically review what I have stockpiled over the years, and do divest my self of things that I realize I will not be using. These biannual reviews help bring order to what I have and also reminds me of what and where it is so it can get used.

So well done and continue.

Nice!!

I can't count the number of times that my junk piles have paid off.

When they do, it's a big deal; it's the difference between being able to repair something, and throwing it away. A lot of parts for the older stuff just aren't around anymore.

I have a general idea where everything is, between my shop and my basement; it's the little stuff that I don't bother looking for...nails, screws, nuts, bolts, etc.

For me... Because there is no other place to put it!

As I tell my wife, It's there because I am trusting gravity to keep it there until I need it again some time later and that some time could be minutes or years away. Either way I have found that gravity is far more responsible at keeping stuff where I left it than any human has ever proved capable of.

(Now stop touching my stuff and get out of my shop! You're disturbing gravity and it has a very important job to do.)

I think I may be missing the point. Why is (which item?) here?

Are you pointing out the workbench which is almost entirely clean? It is not obvious to me what task the worker is doing, so I have no idea which of the tools carefully laid out there, if any, may be superfluous.

My workbench (if it ever got that clean) would only last that way for a few minutes, unless I got called away to work on something else, somewhere else. I virtually never have that few tools on my bench, and more often than not, I also have quite a few things from my previous project, which I couldn't finish because this more urgent need arose...

The only trouble with 'Best Practice' is that reality gets in the way!

Fine if you know exactly which tools will be required for the task - and are left in peace to finish and clean/tidy before the task arrives. But in the real world, there are a multitude of issues to deal with. There is no time/money for a one-man-one-job operation. And the Time and Motion Study did not suggest leaving the workbench to go get extra kit was good practice!

Are you refering to the guy?

All I know is...if I walked into the shop in the picture, my first thought would be, "Damn, this is going to be expensive".

Kind of like the butt pucker that comes with having to deal with the service dept at a car dealership; Everybody's clean, their tool boxes are hand polished, you can eat off the floor...

So that's what the top of a workbench looks like when your not very busy! Been years since I have seen that.

I refuse to keep my bench at home that clean, it makes the wife think I need something to do! :-)

In my world the process of pileology rules. How long ago I saw it dictates what pile it might be in and how far down the pile I need to start looking for it.

I've found I'm getting tidier these days now that I have more tools in my garage. I have to be tidy to make room to work. I have a fair bit of mess while I'm doing one task, then I'll have a clean up when I move to the next stage.
Anyone want a sack of Yew shavings?
The sawdust is handy for sprinkling in the vegetable peelings bin keeps it clean and dry.

Any small fiddly work needs a clean down first so you can find the bits when you drop 'em.
The belt sander is great for throwing small things the length of the garage.
Del

It's here because it's NOT the thing I need at the moment! If I needed it it would be hidden by the "Tool Elves" that live under my bench! They are also responsible for providing the right tool but making sure that it's the dull/broken/wrong size one, when I need it.

Throw it away after a year of no use ? No way ! This part can be considered the heart of this system, and I know it will fail in 4 to 6 years (historic data).

Won't throw it away because it's worth many, many thousand dollars.

Won't throw it away because it's lack when the system fails, will cause +4 weeks of downtime, against a few hours for replacement.

Won't throw it away because having replaced the faulty unit, I can send it to repair while the production is up.

I can accept the goodness of parts Lean, 5's etc. but not everything, for example: zero inventory ? I've seen more problems caused by that, than by some stock.

In all fairness...

If I'm working on something important, (like a rebuild of something), I do create an entirely separate "clean" area, and only have the tools that I need, and keep all parts and pieces painstakingly organized. There's no other way; I've tried.

No beer either.

I concur. Otherwise you waste time trying to find misplaced parts or tools.

Also I use egg cartons during disassembly to keep similar parts separate and in the sequence they will need to be used in reassembly.

All tools go back to the Tool chests or other permanent locations when each project is completed.

Again it saves confusion and frustration when a particular tool is needed. Other workers in our shop also follow this practice benefiting all of us. Just common sense.

Thanks everyone for sharing your experience. Milo

Do you promise to stop cutting your workbench pictures out of the Sears catalogue?

What he heck is the guy in your picture doing?

I fired him last week and he's still standing in the same spot.

Now thats what a workshop is supposed to look like!

Here's my shop.

And my former work shed before my wife made me tear it down and burn it to make room for the new house.

I miss my workshed far more than most would realize.

I like your chaotic filing system

I have found it to be a very effective way of keeping the memory sharp and also very effective at keeping the borrowers away as well!

Nice use of vertical space! Good lighting! I can see why you miss the shed.

I hope you save everything, though. My wife would try to use "tearing down the shed" as a reason to get rid of the stuff.

I'm also a big fan of the "piles and aisles" organizational system. Makes everything easier to find. I still have a little trouble with the "aisles" part though.

Unfortunately everything was placed in tote boxes and neatly packed away in shop on pallet shelving. Good lord I hate it. I absolutely hate having everything put away where I cant find it.

It stresses me out thinking about where it might be then stresses me out more looking and not finding it and then it stresses me out again putting everything back after I gave up looking.

My wife told me it only take 15 minutes a day to put things away. Well yes perhaps but given that I may very well have 70 years of active taking out and putting way to do that works out to.... GD it someone put my calculator away without my permission.

(10 minutes of cursing and searching while pondering on divorce costs...)

15 x 2 x 365 x 70 = 12,775 hours (1 year 5 months 14 days and 17 hours) of my life potentially wasted on taking out and putting things away.

No apologies from me. I simply can't see wasting that much of my life on needless repetitive cr@p that stresses me out and leads to nothing I find gainful.

Who needs to put their tools away in drawers - I can find most of mine now, but still a work in progress!

Boxes of screws are in the cupboard behind tools on the left, and little-used power tools behind that.