bloke wrote: ↑Thu Oct 01, 2020 2:35 pm
I continue to repair instruments, but FAIL to clean up my instrument repairs work area (now: for YEARS
)
I'm trying to come up with strategies to encourage myself to put a temporary moratorium on instrument repairs, home repairs, and property improvement, and to
CLEAN UP MY D@MN ROOM !!! 
Just do it. (Yeah, right - easy for me to say!!!) Seriously, an office that has a heavy caseload has the same issues: you get client files out all day, work on them, and some things need time, say, for correspondence to turn around, and phone calls needing attention and annotation interrupt everything (I call that job security). So the files stay on the desk, the credenza, the odd chair, under a corner of a desk, etc., and the office starts looking like an episode of "Hoarders."
Rome wasn't built in a day. Your workshop didn't get this way overnight. My office doesn't get that way in a day.
Start slow: make yourself put up the tools and supplies and clean that space at the end of a particular job, just like your cleaned the windows, put up the blinds, sent out the trash of the old blinds and the packing materials for the new blinds, and put the tools away.
After you get used to doing that job-to-job, then add the next step: put away or clean up one more item than you took out that day. By definition, over time, that should get things cleaned up. It does for me.
Don't beat yourself up when someone calls for an "emergency" repair that you have to stop what you are doing, and don't get back around to, or you're too tired or stressed from the cramped job to do anything else that day. And don't beat yourself up trying to do too much. That just causes frustration. Start all over the next day.
Everybody else wherever I have worked can't believe that my desk is as organized as it is. When they ask why, the above is what I tell them.
Yes, just put away or clean up one more item each work day over time. I use this with coming home from gigs and having to clean and put away instruments and equipment, laundry, any other household chore or project, and even volunteer work in addition to the day job.
This approach works for me, but it actually requires personal patience to devote that extra few minutes to the one more item without hurry or self-induced stress. YMMV, of course, but I encourage you to give this approach a go.
