I’m a regular over at BT, but thought I would pose this Q over here to see what comes up.
I always get a kick out of pictures of guys’ shops that are so clean you could eat off the benches and floor. Means they probably aren’t really doing very much with all that nicely designed and whistle-clean space.
Mine was once like that too…right after I semi-finished the shop/garage and before the house building started.
Now, with trim, tile, built-in construction, etc, all going on at the same time, and we’ve moved into the house, and this is Minnesota so working outside is not much of an option, and this shop also serves as parking space for two cars…it’s a real challenge to keep this space clean enough for the multi-projects, including varnishing, to get done.
I guess my time to clean up is signaled by how much time I have to spend tip-toeing around piles of shavings, sawdust, end cuts, extension cords snaked around, and also looking for tools and materials that didn’t get put back in the rush.
This is not an earn-your-living space, mind you, just an advanced DIY’r with a limited tool budget (dust collection limited to shop vac hooked up to bottom of table saw)
Actually was amazed last night at how little time it took to clean several areas I’d been cursing for days. Safer now too.
So how about it? Do you clean up after every job even when you’ve got multi going on? Put every tool away after using it? Clean, dry ,and hang the brushes up after every use or let them languish a few days in the solvent (and sometimes forget till it’s too late?) Regular clean up and put away time whether it needs it or not?
Replies
If you share the space with a car, you should clean up before the cars are put in the space.
I don't share my shop space. I clean up when I have nothing better to do. I had some hip pain yesterday. I vacuumed the downstairs portion of my shop. This morning it will be too cold to apply finishes so I will do some cleanup until the shop gets warm.
I ALWAYS have hip pain. Bone on bone. Be getting a new ball and socket this Spring.
Nice to not share the space with cars but not an option in my case...let's see, where can I put lean to on?
A question for the ages, John. - lol
I usually try to do a little cleanup at the end of each day but don't always succeed. Maybe once a week, I just have to stop all work and clean the joint so I can start making a mess again. The 'trigger' for this is usually when I have to start moving stuff around while I hunt for my pencil or tape measure - or when I incur the wrath of SWMBO when I track sawdust into the house. - lol
Finishing creates a whole new set of problems. Most of the year, I can just set stuff outside and let the sun do it's job while I keep making messes in the shop. This time of year, however, I have to just shut down the tools, clean the shop, and dedicate a few days to finish work. A kerosene space heater and/or a halogen worklight keep the shop reasonably warm thru the night but I still have to figure on an extra day or so for finishes to dry. I would be in a real hurt if I had to deal with a MN winter. - lol
Fortunatley, I put tubes in the slab and insulated pretty well so I can keep it a steady 50* in there, bump up to 55* in about 2 hours in the evenings when varnish is going on. Could get it to 70* in a day or two if needed.
Thing is, you can bring a car in there at 20* or so in the evening, and the radiant heat has the WHOLE CAR at 50* by morning.
I live in Southern Ontario, winters are -5 to -15 C. I heat my shop with a radiant tube heater mounted to the ceiling. I leave it at about 5C all the time and when I go in I turn it up to 15C, and it only takes about 10minutes! I have had this heater for 2 years now and I think it is absolutly fantastic. My natural gas bill has increased by about $18 month, I pay on a budget plan year round. Any one looking to heat a shop should check these things out.
My shop is a mess right now. Got rid of my radial arm saw for $100 and bought a Porter Cable compound cut off saw. Now that my wife has seen it she says, "Could you make ........ for me? I respond by saying "Sure honey as soon as I clean up this mess." Well, all at once we are spending some together time. It works every time. Do you thing I have her fooled? She does get her project done and I have a clean shop to mess up again.
Rex
Only trouble with that is she "puts away" some things that I won't find again for months!
Johnnyd,
I have once a week trash pickup..so at a minimum I shoot for putting out a full barrel for the pickup. In general, however, I like to clean up after each phase of a project eg. milling, joinery, glueup, etc....it helps with my concentration and focus on the next phase. My tool set up is such that putting stuff in the right place is almost as easy as leaving it around...but if I don't, putting stuff away takes less than a minute...
I don't want to fool you either...any place in my shop that I don't have direct contact with on a daily basis has about a 1/2" of dust on it...
That's funny, my wife does the same thing. She comes out in the shop and declares it a disaster area and "helps" me by cleaning up. She often says she doesn't understand how I can find anything in this mess, but when she picks up I don't have a clue where anything is!My rule of thumb is I clean up before finishing a project. While I am building I leave things where they are handy to me and let the shavings and dust fly. My small shop then becomes the finishing room so I clean up and put stuff away before I begin the finishing process. Then I clean up the finishing supplies before trashing the shop again.Brian
As a hobbyist who occasionally makes the paying project, I typically clean up at the end of each project or the beginning of the next one. I'm about to start a new project so I'm planning on cleaning tomorrow morning.
I keep telling myself to put things away and clean up as I go but gosh it's tough when you have an hour to work and don't want to waste any of that time cleaning up!
Kell
I'm varnishing alot of trim these days while still needing to use sanders, planer, tile saw, table saw etc. This is all in "spare" time so I can never decide to sweep up, raising dust in the process and moving projects-in-process around for the broom or just sometimes treading lightly over the dust and shavings to raise less dust.
That's why I've gone to using wax-free shellac as a sealer coat...dries much faster, is easy to sand so dust and particles are not as big of an issue, and so takes one less long dry time out of the equation.
I have 2 or 3 "tricks" that help keep things from getting toooooo bad.
As far as any routine clean-up goes, nope, never got the hang of that (well, in college, maybe, the 4 of us roomies had a routine. Longggg time ago).
forestgirl -- you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)
Another proud member of the "I Rocked With ToolDoc Club" .... :>)
There's a saying that applies here. Originally, it was "a clean desk is the sign of a sick mind" Just replace desk with bench.
"I cut this piece four times and it's still too short."
I try to put tools away at the end of every day. Scraps get slung where I won't trip on them. I sweep after big milling operations and I dust before finishing.. Keeping the bench uncluttered is important to me. After each big project, I rub down the powertools with wax, sharpen the planes and chisles and fix anything that is broken.
Frank
I see lots of folks mentioning "sweeping" their shop and feel the need to say that I haven't used a broom in any of my shops since around 1976. I was sweeping up one day and the sunlight coming thru a window let me see the amount of dust that I was kicking up. I got a shop vac a couple of weeks later and have vacuumed ever since. My shop probably gets vacuumed more often than my living room. - lol
Now that I have a DC, I use one of the spare ports for a hose and hook up whatever attachments I need. It does a great job without all the racket.
I guess you'd have to say that I'm a binge cleaner. I dislike cleaning so much that I put it off until I can't stand it any longer. Then, I stop everything until the place is spotless. I seem to speed up, gaining momentum as I go, trying to get the process over with ASAP so that I can get back to woodworking. The concept of cleaning up as I work is just way too foreign to me.Tom
Oddly enough, I'm that way about my desk, but not my shop. My desk will pile up with papers and junk until I can barely find my monitor (and it's a 21" CRT), until I suddenly can't stand it anymore and go on a rampage of organization, much to my beloved spouse's amusement.However, after every session in the shop, I put tools away, clean up scraps and (usually) vacuum up the sawdust. I think this is because a) the shop is still this new shiny thing and I want to keep it that way (and now is the time to develop good shop-keeping habits), and b) working in the shop generally has a definite end point, either when I'm done with a phase of a project or when it's 1AM and I should go the hell to bed already. Also, my shop is a room in the basement of our 2-family house, right next to my downstairs neighbor's sewing room. I figure it wouldn't be a good idea to let the sawdust pile up until it starts getting in her quilting projects. (Neither room has a door at present, a problem I'm going to fix ASAP.)
I used to let things pile up and then vacuum it all up at the end of a phase or project. Now that I have the DC in with a long free hose I'll take a minute to get the loose shavings & sawdust after each step. I love the difference - makes it much more pleasant to be in the shop and easier to focus on the work at hand. Now if I could just figure out how to do that for my desk at work - LOL!
"I always get a kick out of pictures of guys' shops that are so clean you could eat off the benches and floor. Means they probably aren't really doing very much with all that nicely designed and whistle-clean space."
When to clean the shop? Well duh- right before you take pictures. ;-)
m
By the time I got through stock prep this afternoon, the shavings at the end of the bench were about thigh deep.... good time to tidy; even vac'd the floor too...
It ummm..... stayed clean for all of 5 mins.. now it's back to lookin like something constructive's goin on....
Mike Wallace
Stay safe....Have fun
jonnyd,
What do you actually mean by "cleaning up"? I work on weekends only. I have the entire cellar of our weekend house. If not at the end of each day at least at the end of the weekend I vacuum the floor, machines and tables and put tools away. Of course all those cutoff pieces are lying around where I left them and after 3 years I'm still trying to create wood storage areas.
So, are most things where they belong, yes
Is the dust picked up, yes
Do I wish I had more places to put things and I were better organized, absolutely
ASK
A great question .......I think one' s tolerance for mess is a function of one's personality. Some seem to function very nicely amidst clutter and dust, others do not. I am clearly in the latter camp, and some of my friends would say I am obsessive. I think some also equate clutter with productivity -- i.e. if the shop looks messy I must be really busy (no time to clean up, because I'm working so hard on my project.)In the end I would say strike the balance that pleases you -- and don't worry about it, one way or the other.
You know that is an excellent question. I have done it both ways. Many moons ago, I would just stop working in the shop and come back latter. I would clean up when I had to. After acquiring some tools and a dust collector I have found it easier to make it the last thing I do prior to leaving the shop. I manage to collect most of the dust at the machine. Cleanup consists of a wide wisk broom and a shop vac. I blow off the tools with compressed air and put them back in their cases. I also have noticed that by finishing the shop floor and sealing it, sweeping up only takes a moment. Final piles of dust are picked up by the old shop vac. I take the final few moments to pick up any trash. I tend to use disposable brushes, so they don't get cleaned, they get tossed. If the table saw has not been waxed in a long time, I'll even put a coat of wax on that. It kind of winds me down. By then, it occurs to me it's after 11:00 P.M. and I'd better get in bed. My wife refers to my shop as my "pout-house". I can go out there turn on the TV and disappear and work to my hearts content. If the young-uns are getting out of hand, then the dust collector comes on. Done it both ways, and I'd have to vote for clean up after use.
Funny you should ask this today...
Call the building department for a building inspection. This just worked for me. Just had my final inspection done today. I didn't pass, But I knew I wouldn't, till a few things to finish. I just wanted a temporary Certificate of Occupancy so we could leagally be in the home We've been in living in it for 6 weeks with no occupancy beacuse we had to move out of our rental. I did get the Temporary occupancy... good for 90 days.
He did ask me how I get my kids to keep their rooms clean. I told him that he (the inspector) was coming today.
We are now legal... my wife now gets to put up the Christmas decorations/lights. This should be good for a few "bonus points"
I don't really know how to answer this post, except to say that like all work routines, there is a certain amount of habit to it. Also, I'd probably sacrafice a clean shop for an organized one... there's enough frustration in life, I don't need to be frustrated by my workspace as well.
An organized, and clean, shop is a safer shop
An organized shop leads to less frustration
tools not in use get put away, tools put away don't get damaged (especially sharp things like chisels and planes)
finally, a shop that is organized around how you work tends to keep itself organized.
>>>>An organized shop leads to less frustration
Yes. I clean up when i spend more time losing and looking for stuff, than doing productive work... when it gets so frustrating that it's not worth continuing to stumble through the mess. That's when, and not a minute too soon :-)
>>>An organized, and clean, shop is a safer shop
oh yeah, that too. when I start having "little"accidents.
Johnny -
I've always had a horrible habit of leaving tools out, get another one, leave it out ... so on and so forth. Now that I finally have a dedicated shop, albeit still in an early stage of getting organized, I've tried to create a place for things whereas they never had a "place" before. Thus when I'm finished with a tool I try to put it back right away. Odd how much easier it is to find things now!
As for cleanup, until yesterday I was without any kind of dust collection. Now I've got a nice big cyclone unit. Have yet to get the jointer and planer plugged in but it sure helps keep the table saw area clean. Before I'd put off sweeping up until I found I couldn't find a tool I left lying on the floor for all the shavings and sawdust (grin)
Seriously, though, I think in the interest of safety we all, myself included, should pay more attention to keeping the shop reasonably clean, extension cords out of the way and not a trip hazard, .... that sort of thing. I know I'm trying to pay more attention to it.
And yes, I agree ... I can't see how any shop that sees any kind of use would ever be as antiseptically clean as the ones we see in the mag articles (haha)
From Beautiful Skagit Co. Wa.
Dennis
I've been accused of having an obsessively clean shop. Partly I blame my Dad for this and partly I can't stand hunting for something that's buried or misplaced. There are enough times during a project where there's nothing to do (waiting on glue or finish to dry) that I'm able to stay ahead of things. Usually at the end of the day I spend a half hour or so putting things away (this comes from growing up in a shop environment where a bell range 10 or 15 minutes before the shift ended) and running the shop vac. With having a basement shop and inadequate dust collection it does become something of a must and not an option.
I have in the past wondered about "show shops".
Keith Bohn
Johnny,
I keep my shop pretty clean. Not as clean as the magazines do, you wouldn't want to eat off my floor! We organize after each stage of the project. For example after milling the lumber the planer and joiner are moved back against the wall, the calipers and moisture meter are put back up and any other bits and pieces are put up like scraps and such. After all the machine work is done we clean everything and sweep the floors. After the glue up and final sanding/scraping we dust, sweep and vacume everthing to prepare for the finishing. After finishing we clean up again. Keep in mind that we have a dedicated shop and my projects typicaly take a week or more. Getting in a hurry and not cleaning up or putting up the tools is frustrating or even dangerous. I've seen guys using the table saw when there was stuff piled up on the outfeed table, same with the router table. That is a recipe for disaster.
have fun,
Mike
Thanks much for your input, ALL....
After a forced experiment this weekend (DW's family coming for X-mas...12 siblings+ to our new and lived in but still unfinished house, doors, jambs, and jam extensions needed to be ripped, finished and installed pronto!)...I found that the ripping and machining process was best done as a production, then sweep up, allow the dust to settle, then finish, rather than walking around in the sawdust etc, afraid that sweeping up would raise too much dust. DUH!, I know it seems like common sense, but I let the scraps and dust get out of hand.
Now a wheel barrow full of tools etc can go back up to the detached shop/garage and put away where they belong.
Well, I guess I'm one of those that has to clean everyday. Kind of an OCD thing. Since I'm prone to terrible sinus infections I try to keep dust at a minimun. I sweep up each day and since my workshop is also my garage, I just open the doors and take a leaf blower and blow the residual dust out into the atmosphere for the rest of the neighborhood to enjoy.
I also put away each tool but don't really clean them.
Every day. Scraps go in the trash as soon as they fall on the floor. Tools go back on the shelf/pegboard. Floor gets swept.
What's the big deal?
I'm not a full timer, I do a few projects a year. I usually clean up before a project and at the end of each work day. I currently use a shop vac for dust collection and cleaning up. I dump this out after clean-up. When I don't have anything going my bench slowly builds a pile of tools and things. I always try to keep the floor clear so I don't break my neck.
There are more old drunkards than old doctors. Ben Franklin
I made it a rule to stop what I'm doing and clean up anytime I can't find things I've put down recently. This saves me the frustration (and time lost) looking around for a pencil, square, or whatever. It also helps me slow down and enjoy what I"m doing more.
But then again, it has been said rules are made to be broken...
"So how about it? Do you clean up after every job even when you've got multi going on? Put every tool away after using it? Clean, dry ,and hang the brushes up after every use or let them languish a few days in the solvent (and sometimes forget till it's too late?) Regular clean up and put away time whether it needs it or not?"
How about this for a new answer:
When dad says so!
Went down to the shop to find my PC ROS on the workbench, various tools laid about, bandsaw with scrap on it and around it. When I asked my 14 year old why he did not clean up as he should he replied "Dad, I'll be back down finishing my project this week-end. This way all my stuff is right here" He then stares at me with a puzzled look.
I started to get the old temperature up, and then remembered my early day's. Instead of getting upset, I quietly corrected his misguided way of thinking and he proceeded to clean up. My wife say's he's just like me. Oh well, I guess he still has a chance.
He'll probably be like that until he goes away and has to share a dorm room or apartment. All three of my girls' rooms were absolute disasters while they were still home but youngest is home now for the first time after sharing a dorm room and turned out just like the other two...relatively neat and tidy.
'course he's getting a head strart having to share the shop with you.
Actually I have started to wind the cord up and tuck away the sanders and such right after use, even if I have to take them out again in a short while. Actually takes less time and certainly less agravation that way. Spent 1 1/2 hours last night just putting away tools that aren't needed any more down at the house. Of course "aren't needed any more" is just fiction, but at least I'll find now when I need 'em.
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