About twice a year, I start shifting equipment and supplies in the carving shop. Days that I do that are like having deja vu about my UPS days and playing a very bizarre game of Tetris. The carving shop is only an 8×10 foot greenhouse. Just so much and no more will fit before something has to return to the machine shop in the cellar. I try to be very organized given the limited storage, but inevitably there comes an exclamation of, ” So that’s where that got to!” This exclamation almost always comes as I dig under a bench and way in the back where things fall or a cat shoves them. Right now, I’ve cleared the principal carving bench, so I can once again carve something the size of a transom banner if needed.
But if I remove something from the greenhouse, it has to go somewhere. So the result is that any reorganization in the greenhouse results in a reshuffling in the machine shop. Luckily the last dumpster clean out of the basement allows me a little leeway to reorganize.
Why the reorganization now? Well, I am thinking seriously of ramping up the carving business again. To kick it out of the lassitude of the past six years, I need to rearrange processes so they fall in a sensible and reasonably sequential order. This is not so important when doing the odd boat portrait, a few bowls, and a few spoons. Being that I plan on doing shows again ( post-pandemic desires to be out and about), that means forty or fifty spoons, seven or more cutting boards, a dozen bowls, thirty or so of the boat bookmarks I make, some mast hoop boat portraits, and a lot of other stuff. To achieve the goal of going home after a show with most of the goods sold, you first have to make them.
You’ll notice that through this, I did not mention the wood storage. When we did the dumpster clean-out, I shifted most of that to a reorganized storage shed. As a result, I have wood ranging from bits of ebony weighing in at about the apothecary weight of a scruple to larger near balks of wood that I’ve been saving for thirty years. Unfortunately, I can’t find what I need most of the time. So this will need reorganization too.
Oh, joy! Let the festivity begin!
My husband and I have entirely different takes on the word ‘reorganize.’ To me, it means clean up and throw out. To him it means rearrange. Grr-rrr.
I try to split the difference.