Cue Rod Serling

Good Evening, Ladies and Gentlemen

Consider if you will, a man with the shop of his dreams, dreams that formed at the knee of his father working together at the bench well over a half century ago.   This shop is in Shangri-la, a place and a refuge from the maelstrom from the surrounding civilization swirling down the drain.

Unfortunately our subject is not the most orderly fellow in the world, and over the years his shop and all its contents have slowly drifted into disorder.  The time has come for him to impose order on the space and all its contents, tools and supplies requisite for almost any sort of project imaginable.

If this fellow were you in a one-car garage workshop, how long would it take you to clean and organize every cubic foot of it?  Now imagine that instead of a one-car garage your workshop is equivalent to a 36-car garage and you get the sense of the task before him

Welcome, my friends, to the Rearranger Zone.

So that’s what I have been up to almost 100% of my shop time since last Thanksgiving, with hopes the undertaking will be complete this coming Thanksgiving.

By far my favorite woodworking shop video of all time was James “Stumpy Nubs” Hamilton’s presentation of “Rearrangeritis,” a debilitating disease for most craftsmen.

I will write more about this soon, but the plain and simple facts are that, in addition to being more than a little bit whimsical in my shop arranging and housekeeping, two realities have emerged.  First, I use the space and setups differently than I had originally imagined.  Second, what I am doing in the space has evolved over the years so even if the original organization was correct, it is so no longer.

Whenever I take too long between posts I’ll get a gentle query or two as to my well-being.  All is well, I’m just cleaning and reorganizing and wrestling with this current bout of Rearrangeritis.