Humans are weird. We hold on to things we’ll never need because we hate to see anything thrown out. We buy houses and build sheds just so we have somewhere to put all of our stuff, and then we live happily for the next 20 years in denial about the growing pile of useless junk surrounding us. Until…. One day we go on a rampage and throw out everything in some sort of catharsis of the soul (and workshop). This happened to me and I’m sure you can relate.
My old workshop was very makeshift. I had all my gear set up in the double garage leaving no room for any vehicles. I hate to say it, but I was one of those people with a perfectly good double garage and two cars constantly sitting in the South East Queensland sun. When I retired, Jacqui prompted me to build the backyard workshop of my dreams. It was a lovely thing for her to do, but I have a feeling that while I was dreaming about a place to hang my tools and mount my table-saw, she was dreaming about avoiding another summer of seatbelt burn from getting into her boiling hatchback.
Once the new shed was erected, I got to work creating inbuilt cabinets and shelving to hold, hang, and display my gear. I even dedicated a whole wall to a custom peg-board so I could have a place for each tool and each tool in its place. This new workshop was going to have something the humble double garage didn’t – organization.
After the painters left on their last day, I started getting ready to move my gear across the back yard to the new workshop, quickly realising I was in over my head. On that first day, I did three Ute loads of rubbish before smoko. As my back was throbbing from the loading and unloading, and my head was aching from the constant puzzle of how to tie every load down, I decided I needed a skip bin.
I did some research and decided that a skip bin hire was going to make this move so much easier. The skip bin arrived, and I immediately began turfing beat-up old freestanding cabinets and tables into the bin. The best part was with a dust off of my hands the rubbish was someone else’s problem. All I had to do was throw it in. I found things in that garage that must’ve been there for 20 years, old bottles of dried-up varnish, now smooth sandpaper, 5 metric tonnes of wood shavings, and about 47 thousand bent nails. I was able to banish it all into the skip bin and saved so much time and effort on dump runs. I actually think the money I saved on tip fees might have paid for the skip bin. I noticed Jacq adding a few old bits and pieces from the house too. After my gear was all set up in my perfectly organized shiny new shed, the skip bin was taken away and we parked our vehicles in their rightful place in the garage. My marriage has never been so great!
