Saturday morning was a beautiful morning the sun was shining albeit a little bit cold but still an amazing day considering its November. Besides cleaning I also wanted to do a little bit of maintenance that I have been putting off for a while. The last time I was mowing the lawn I simply did not get time to clean down the lawnmower and I also wanted to carry out a little bit of maintenance on this to ensure it would be okay when we get past the winter.

Once this was done it was time to put up some new shelves that I had purchased in one of the local DIY stores a few weeks ago. I had also purchased some storage boxes because I really needed to get organized and keep parts and bits and pieces in each box. The shelves took around 30 minutes to set up and then it was time to organize all the spare parts and bits and pieces I had. One of the first things I wanted to do was start looking at the amount of battery chargers I had. To be honest this is something that has really changed over the past few years. Not that long ago it was quite difficult to get some cordless equipment and nowadays I have a cordless saw, cordless drill, cordless sander and a cordless angle grinder. With this comes a many different chargers and batteries, don’t get me wrong this is not a bad idea and I’m not one to complain but this is one of the reasons I really needed to organize my workshop because every time I was using one of the cordless pieces of equipment it was taking me a long time to try find the charger and battery. Then I would discover that I had never actually recharge the battery and I would have to wait until this was done before I could use equipment (sometimes this was simply an excuse).

It took me just a short period of time to organize these and I was pleasantly surprised to find a couple of spare batteries and chargers that I didn’t even know I had purchased. This is something all of us DIY enthusiasts should sort out every now and again but I guarantee that many of you out there never bother doing this and then find it a pain in the ass to try find the equipment at some later stage.

Next I moved on to organizing all the rest of the spare parts that I had. It’s actually amazing at the amount of rubbish you can connect and I cannot have two ideas behind sorting out the workshop one was to get organized and the other was to start dumping lots of equipment and parts that are no longer have use for. Sometimes it’s the accumulation of this stuff that helps toward the unorganized workshop.

After a couple of hours everything was sorted it is amazing to be able to have the windows and doors of the workshop opened while I was sorting through everything. I must say it was the perfect Saturday morning for getting this type of work done and something I should have done a few months ago. All in all I am now 100% happy with the re-organize workshop I can now find things easily and I have removed lots of equipment and parts that I had no more use for. It’s something we all need to do at some stage and if you have a little bit of spare time this weekend maybe you should consider the spending a couple of hours sorting it out so it saves you some time later when you have to find something.

A couple of years ago I picked up an air compressor that I have used so many times on jobs for all sorts of different thing. One of the recent job that I’d done was to do some spray painting I’d installed an air system kit in to my workshop for many years before but to be honest it’s not the sort of thing I was utilizing but at the time it was quite cheap so I knew someday it will come in handy. Anyway about two weeks ago Bob called over and wanted me to work on spraying a motorcycle petrol tank he knew I had and air gun that would easily fit on two the compressor that was sitting in the corner gathering dust.

It didn’t take us long to get this started we simply have to use an extension cord to get to the compressor clued in as I wanted to do this as an outside job because the ventilation within the workshop was not great.  After around 20 minutes to jump was complete well the first coat of paint was actually complete and as I said to Bob maybe I should move in to the auto painting business as to be honest the petrol tank turned out absolutely amazing.

Although I’ve had to be air compressor in my workshop for a number of years it had been a while since I used it and it’s the kind of equipment that gets used all the time but sometimes you may not look in it for six months. Is it a worthwhile investment?  Absolutely I think it was the best money I spent as it has given me so much loyalty and usage over the years that I would never think having a workshop without a decent air compressor. Once you understand the dangers with compressed air they are very simple to understand but it was also the respected having any decent pair of goggles and making sure you work in a well ventilated area and protected you’ll never have an issue using one of these.

As with everything in life is getting cheaper and cheaper all-time and the more portable ones are just so handy for some of the smaller jobs.