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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 !!!

OK...
Astonishingly, mini blinds cost the SAME now (Walmart) as they did 15 years ago ($13 for 48" x 64") and they're actually built BETTER and are now CORDLESS.

I bought TWO, yesterday, and just finished hanging ONE. I cleaned the dead smashed-and-sprayed BUGS (from the interior surfaces of the windows) and the MOLD (from the EXTERIOR surfaces)... ahhhhhhhhhhh.

These aren't easy...The little-bitty cheapie old screws (in VERY hard window frame wood) are stubborn to remove, and the new ones - well - the same for putting them in.
Also, trimming them to the correct length (rather than just leaving them at 64" long)...THAT took some time, as well...
...I'll get the other one done...but (well...) first, I MUST repair some folks' instruments, before I start getting phone calls from people.

...and NO you DO NOT get to see the "before" (old discarded blinds) picture...I didn't take one...It was horrible.

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.

LOL...

I'm VERY GOOD at cleaning up and organizing stuff...
It's just that I do NOT do it very often...

Our house still had a curtain and wallpaper in the shower room when we took over.

The right sized out of the box blind replacement was one of the happiest projects I’ve ever completed!!

I read about (woodworking) shops: telling yourself "I'm going to tidy up the sanding station today" is a lot more workable than 'I'm going to cleanup the shop today.'


Pick an area/subsection and have at it.

'says he whose woodshop/tuba messing around shop looks like a complete disaster...

York-aholic wrote: ↑Fri Oct 02, 2020 9:27 am I read about (woodworking) shops: telling yourself "I'm going to tidy up the sanding station today" is a lot more workable than 'I'm going to cleanup the shop today.'


Pick an area/subsection and have at it.

'says he whose woodshop/tuba messing around shop looks like a complete disaster...

That sounds like a very logical tack...but all of my "stations' " items are all stirred together - as if in a goulash.

The thing is...
Those tools and supplies that I most commonly need are all lying around near my chair and favorite vice, so...

If a cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered mind, what does an empty desk signify?

Rick “cluttered” Denney

My desk is not cluttered.

But my filing system is so sophisticated, that less advanced persons mistake it for being cluttered.

bloke wrote: ↑Fri Oct 02, 2020 10:31 am
The thing is...
Those tools and supplies that I most commonly need are all lying around near my chair and favorite vice, so...

Then it sounds like it is organized enough!

York-aholic wrote: ↑Fri Oct 02, 2020 1:34 pm

bloke wrote: ↑Fri Oct 02, 2020 10:31 am
The thing is...
Those tools and supplies that I most commonly need are all lying around near my chair and favorite vice, so...

Then it sounds like it is organized enough!

yeah...which is why the motivation to clean up isn't as strong as it should be...

Mostly, there are piles of PARTS (laying around) that need to get sorted/labeled/put into cardboard boxes, and set up above my workroom - in "the attic".

Once those disappear, the messy tools disaster will probably look like a manageable disaster.

PLEASE come to MN so I can introduce you to the (very talented and nice guy) tech who worked on my Holton. This gentleman would win the prize for messiest work space ever, on any planet, in any galaxy. I cannot even begin to describe it, other than the only way to access the shop was walking narrow trails thru the entire house. IN-credible. Brett will vouch for this.
You would not believe it.
BUT, like I said, really good guy and a fine tech.
Tim

MN_TimTuba wrote: ↑Sat Oct 03, 2020 8:05 pm PLEASE come to MN so I can introduce you to the (very talented and nice guy) tech who worked on my Holton. This gentleman would win the prize for messiest work space ever, on any planet, in any galaxy. I cannot even begin to describe it, other than the only way to access the shop was walking narrow trails thru the entire house. IN-credible. Brett will vouch for this.
You would not believe it.
BUT, like I said, really good guy and a fine tech.
Tim

Confirmed. A complete hoarder house. It was scary, and I won't go back (that was 5 years ago, and I still haven't been back). Nice guy, very good work... But I've got my limits.

If I could drop my tuba off with him elsewhere and never step foot in his house (or neighborhood, really ... Not a good part of town), I'd probably be okay with that. Because he did do nice work. As they say, you don't want to see how the sausage is made ...

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 !!!

I told myself for over a year I was going to clean off my workbench. One day I went down there, hung up all the tools, placed an empty Rubbermaid bin at one end, and just swept everything else into it. That was over a year ago and I haven't felt the need to look in that bin at all. I should probably just set it on the curb.