Early Father's Day Present

In the past many years, I've had problems coming up with gifts for Kelly for birthdays, Christmas and Father's Day.  I don't know what electronics he wants or needs, or what gizmos he'd be interested in, and generally when I try, I get the wrong thing--not the right size, the wrong technology, or simply something he doesn't need.  Disappointing, to say the least.  Sometimes when I DO find the perfect gift, he's able to guess it without opening the wrappings, which takes all the fun out of it.  I needed to be a little more creative.

This year, while pondering what I could get, I decided that what he really needed wasn't going to cost money (a plus for us now since we just did a bunch of work in the kitchen, and the kids' bathroom is next for repairs), and would benefit us both; help cleaning up and organizing his shop space. This was also a benefit for me, since I was working on the yurt and couldn't navigate around the area or find the tools I needed.  I was tripping over cords and bits of wood, and having trouble finding places to stack the 150 or so khana pieces and get the 88" long sticks loaded into the drill press.  It was frustrating and claustrophobic.  

I started to work in the back area, stacking the boxes and cases neatly onto shelves, sweeping up, and hanging tools on the walls.  I mostly cleared off the work bench, made more walking space, and put tools where they can now be more easily found.  There's still more work to be done, but I gave Kelly a sneak preview of my progress...since I couldn't very well hide it or ask him to stay out of his work area for the next two weeks.  He's very impressed and (hopefully) motivated to continue the trend.  Not everything could be put away--I don't know what some of the tools even *are*, much less where to put them, so I have to rely on him to finish some parts of it, and maybe he'll have a better way of organizing it so he can find things better, but I'm trying to at least put like items together and throw away garbage.

It might still look a mess, but believe me, this is a huge improvement.  I'll work on it a bit more over the next few days and see if I can make this a very workable space.  However, there is a limited amount of space--it's a single car garage space--so unless you plan on moving some of the tools out, there are limitations to what you can really work on.  Luckily, my very smart husband put several of the tools on tables with lockable casters, so you *can* move them around easily, and even move them into the driveway to work in the sunshine, if you wish.  On rainy days, though, we really need to have a space to roll the things to so they don't get wet.  This is going to require a lot more garage cleaning so we can roll them to the other part of the garage (which means temporarily parking the car in the rain).  We've got a ton of stuff to throw out or donate...ugh.  Box springs, several boxes of forgotten books, the weird "misc" boxes from the move, and more.  I need a pick up truck.

Tomorrow is going to involve more grocery shopping (I've got coupons!), Walmart, Costco, and re-organizing the pantry.  It's become almost unworkable, but weird things keep winding up in the pantry, like Christmas decorations, tools, cleaning materials, and stuff that has to go to Goodwill.  Time to purge the space with a good Spring Cleaning!  Maybe I'll be able to squeeze in a run to Goodwill before school gets out.  It'll be a busy day, in any case.

K