My shop is pretty small, just a small room with a bench, my hand tools, and wood. Most of the tools that plug-in live in the basement.

Still, this small workspace manages to accumulate an impressive amount of sawdust, wood-shavings, cut-offs, as well as a strange assortment of things that mysteriously appear for reasons unknown. Take for example an empty quart pickle jar that I found while excavating scrap-wood from a corner. I don’t know how the jar got there. I don’t eat pickles. I do not need a pickle jar in the shop, yet somehow it is there.

I have a theory; everything lost ends up someplace else. Perhaps somewhere in the world someone is missing an empty pickle jar. And somewhere in the world someone is perhaps cleaning a kitchen and wondering how a #49 drill bit I lost ended up in a silverware drawer.

It all makes sense to me.

This time around I am doing what I call a “deep cleaning” of the shop; I am rearranging things to make work and storage more efficient. I just set up a table so I can clutter a horizontal surface that is easier to reach than the floor. There are fewer cardboard boxes with mysteries therein. I can almost walk across the room without stepping over anything. I can see the top of the bench around a half-built dulcimer. In an hour my shop will be a happier little paradise than it was earlier today.

Coffee break is over, time to get back on my head!