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A workshop is a place to inspire, to fix, to create. If done correctly, it can feel almost sanctuary-like—clean, organized, and efficient. If done incorrectly, however, it can feel—well, like a heap of tools mixed in with piles of garbage.
Whether you have the luxury of a fully dedicated workshop room, or you’re working with a corner of a garage or a shed, make your workshop a thing of beauty with these 6 tips.
Take Inventory
Sometimes, you need to make a mess to clean a mess. Dedicate an afternoon to clearing out your current workspace. Lay out everything you own—what’s broken? Do you have any multiples? Keep what you need, fix what you can, donate what’s not needed, and toss what cannot be salvaged. Make a shopping list to replenish any missing supplies to avoid frustration down the road.
Wall Space is Your Friend
You might think that you could never possibly have enough storage space for all of your workshop gear. In fact, you do: you just need to think vertically.
Utilize vertical wall space by incorporating shelving units, magnetic strips, and peg boards that can be used to hang tools. Think creatively: for instance, install a paper towel roll dispenser to be used for dispensing garbage bags, duct tape, or spools of wire.
Empty the Floor
Leave the floor as empty as you possibly can, opting instead to hang or shelve items.
A clear floor will help in a few ways. First, it allows you to use your space efficiently: no dodging or stepping over items, just moving from point A to point B without interruption. Second, it makes it easier to keep your space tidy. It’s easy to sweep an empty floor quickly at the end of the day; a cluttered floor, not so much. Finally, your workshop will just look cleaner. You might not think that looks matter, but they do. A clean space means an uncluttered mind, and an uncluttered mind means fewer silly mistakes and setbacks.
Sweat the Small Stuff
Nuts, bolts, screws, nails: anyone who’s had to sift through mismatched hardware knows how easy it is to let the small bits and pieces get disorganized.
The solution: keep all those odds and ends separate from one another. Put each one in a separate zippered plastic bag, and use a permanent market to label the bag with its contents. Next, keep all of these plastic bags organized in a container. You don’t need to get too technical: try an ice cube tray or a muffin tin!
Prioritize
Items you use frequently should be easily accessible. Consider displaying your most often used tools so that you can physically see them at all times: no more hunting around for your hammer. Do this by hanging items with holes on the end from hooks, or affixing tools to peg boards.
Items that aren’t used as often can be tucked away in boxes, baskets or shelves to avoid unnecessary visual clutter. The key to remembering where you put everything? Label, label, label. Whether your labels are scrawled by hand on masking tape or computer-printed stickers doesn’t matter—just keep it consistent. In organization, consistency helps create a harmonious space.
Establish Rules
Organizing is often the easy part—keeping everything organized is the challenge.
Set rules for yourself and do your best to follow them. For instance, by the end of each day, your working surfaces need to be totally cleared out. Or, if you take any breaks, you need to store anything that might get lost—say, anything smaller than your index finger.
Every so often (like at that start of spring and the start of fall), take time to organize and clean your workshop in-depth. Little things add up over time, so a deep purge a couple times a year is a good idea.
