Messy Life

For many years my "active" time has been divided up between work and one or two main hobbies. Although, I find as the years go by, I'm really only able to really support one hobby. I feel like I'm spread pretty thin. I work the typical 9-5ish kind of hours, then maybe do 5-10 hours of my hobby. Miscellaneous chores and errands take up the rest of my time.

One way I compensate for being spread thin is by letting my organization go to shit. For example I have a pretty good workshop. I have metal and woodworking equipment and tools for car and equipment repairs, etc... Sometimes it is very organized and tidy, but generally tends toward chaos. It's currently in a very bad state because my focus is on other things, but I do have to randomly tackle repair jobs on a car the house or whatever.

I noticed many active people end up in a similar situation. Being messy seems like a cheat code, but it really is detrimental overall. For example, a lost tool might add an extra half hour to some repair job, and that extra churn compounds the problems. Plus in theory it's even "dangerous" as in there is more stuff to trip over in a messy shop.

I know professional fabricators who are very good at being neat and clean in their workshop. That said, they can spend an hour or two of the day cleaning and putting stuff away and still be productive for 6 hours or whatever, while my general goal when I'm trying to fix something in the house is to be as fast as possible so I can go do other things.

I believe if I had a better system for organizing things, my workshop wouldn't be such a mess. I find, for example, the classic big toolbox for storing tools doesn't work for me. My problem is my collection of tools changes pretty rapidly as I need to tackle new jobs, but the storage for it doesn't... so it ends up shoved into toolbox drawers.

Anyway, periodically I spend some time refactoring my stuff and do a big cleanup. Now that spring is finally here in northeast Ohio, I'm starting on that project. I'm going to use boxes and shelves and bags instead of a toolbox.