Did you ever get the feeling you seriously needed to pare down the artifacts of your life? That’s how I feel whenever I walk into my basement workshop. I try to ignore that feeling, but it doesn’t work. I can only ignore so much, especially as the piles of stuff increase yet the amount of space does not.

John came to my house at Christmas and commented on how much of a mess the workshop was. I was trying to get a few things done before he showed up, but he arrived early and saw me working in the middle of everything.

“I thought you cleaned this up?” he said.

“I did,” I lied, “But then I started making something and before I knew it, it was all messed up.”

Yes, he commented how cluttered and messy it was. But I can’t see anything to get rid of. The ancient homemade tool chest I picked up a month or so ago has claimed some significant real estate and perhaps I should get rid of it. But I have not yet unearthed all its contents. Yes, it does contain that much stuff.

Anyway, perhaps that can be this year’s New Year’s Resolution. Get rid of some of the stuff. What do they call that? I don’t remember. Some people say it’s simplifying. For the most part, it makes it easier to clean.

I have had other resolutions in the past (see here and here and even here). I think I have successfully avoided enacting any of them.

This one is destined to suffer the same fate.

Truthfully, there is only so much stuff you can get rid of. Everyone needs a spare caulking gun or six. Everyone needs a dozen or so rusty chisels to rehabilitate… some day. Everyone needs three table saws and a radial arm saw, two dado sets, somewhere around fifteen 10-inch sawblades (of all descriptions), several circular saws, a couple of mitre saws, some other saws that may or may not have particular names. It’s also good to have a huge collection of broken battery-powered tools in case any of them suddenly spring back to life.

That reminds me: I have, on at least four occasions, picked up the same broken drill and wondered why the battery was dead. I am too young to be suffering from senility, aren’t I?

I have yet to even begin to talk about material. All wood is useful, of course. Every tiny piece of it. I have even kept 2x3s that were full of nails. You know, just in case I was building a wall. A thin wall.

I still have them. I will eventually build them into a wall.

I will then immediately ruin a spade bit by drilling through a nail to run a wire.

Above, you can see a portion of my long-suffering workbench. It will never ever ever be free from debris. The other end of it is worse….

But seriously: everyone knows that every little scrap of wood can eventually be used in something. It really makes no sense to get rid of any of it.

I currently have scraps of wood in a number of plastic containers. They have been accumulating there for 10 years.

No, they never leave the containers.

There’s a problem with the stockpiled random offcut material. You need to dig through it to find out what’s there. Sure, you think there might be a piece of oak that’s big enough to make a box, but why risk it? At this point, there could be spiders living in there. Big spiders. The kind that don’t like you. At the very least, there’s sure to be a lot of dust. Best to leave it alone.

In case you can’t tell, this year my real New Year’s Resolution is to continue to convince myself that I should not bother cleaning the messy shop, that I should keep everything without even attempting to sort it. Then, perhaps, I will break that resolution, get off my ass, and actually improve the situation.

I hope you all have a great year!