Tidying the Mind

 

The woodshops in various states of clutter

My workshop and my mind are a mess. It isn’t a disaster or a catastrophe. I just had a long week of work and it's been a long winter of half finished projects and half-baked ideas. There are bags of screws and electrical parts strewn about amidst broken saws, dull chainsaw blades and unused plumbing parts. In my head, I am stuck on a few song lyrics for a new song about the wildfire season of 2017. I am planning my wedding, now just four months away. I am trying to compose email responses to people I really don’t want to talk to. I am scheming how to accomplish an upcoming week of high and dangerous roofing around potential snow and wind. A lot is going on simultaneously in my head and on the workbench. It is uncanny how often the clutter of the shop and the clutter of my mind are synonymous. But when I clean the physical world, it seems that the mental clutter gets organized too. 

Some people like a messy shop. They know exactly where everything is. They like to see all of their various projects at once. Or, they just don’t care. To each their own, but I like things tidy. It does not have to be spic and span, just orderly. I don’t like tripping over tools. When I want a 14mm socket, I want to find it in the socket drawer, not under the half finished ceiling fan after a half hour of searching. 

Today is Super Bowl Sunday, and I have football on the brain, so it isn’t a great day for deep creative thought. The sun is shining and there is the hint of a breeze, but the light is getting brighter. February sun is such a tease, since I know there is more winter imminent, but it still feels amazing to be outside in a sweatshirt and no gloves today. I wander between various sheds, contemplating how much I want to tackle. Tidying and cleaning are two very different tasks. I want to be able to walk through the workshop with heavy boxes in my hands, but I don’t want to attempt to organize the disaster pile of hardwood scraps and Mexican tile that is haphazardly guarding the back wall. That is a spring project. Ah spring, that fleeting moment between frigid winter and scorching summer. 

As I put the screwdrivers in their proper toolbox and sort roofing screws from sheet metal screws, I am scheming my spring projects. A rebuild of the old deck stairs, a fresh coat of oil on deck boards, a little concrete pad and french drain, rearrange the gutters to reduce mud, nothing too hefty, but all necessary for long term endurance and winter safety of the steep hillside that I live on. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of medicine, or something wise like that. It’s already working. The tidying, I mean. 

As tools start reappearing on the pegboard and boxes start getting returned to the high shelves, I am becoming more chipper. Snippets of songs are bouncing around in my skull. I am tapping my hands on my pockets in a rhythm and shuffling my feet in a mini dance. A large cooler full of door handles (I utilize whatever containers I can find when I need them) slides perfectly into a gap between the 6” jointer and the defunct drill press. I pump my fist as if I just won a game of tetris and move on to the next level. 

The shop vac comes out, slurping up seven months of cobwebs and detritus. All the random screws find their way into the random screw bin. I have to get in a real mood to sort the screw bin, not today, but someday. Outside the shed, I hear David crank up the music again. He decided on Friday to change out the head gaskets in the 91 Explorer in the other shed. A bold proposition for most people, but not for him. I cleaned out that shed last weekend for this very opportunity. Things get done when there is space to do them. Same goes for the ideas in my head. I whip out my notebook and start scribbling. Before too long, I have filled three pages with plans, material lists, and ideas. And now I am getting a hankering to play my guitar. I’ll slide the last box of plumbing parts under the workbench for better organization on the next clutter-cleaning Sunday and retire to the sunny and toasty living room for an hour of guitar before the Super Bowl. Monday doesn’t stand a chance…

The junkpiles circa 2021