A graphic of a tool box with various tools around it - drill, spanner, saw, pliers, screw driver

Episode 140 – How To Declutter and Organise Workshop, Shed and Garage Tools

In this episode, we are discussing all things tools. Tools seem to hang around in our homes forever as we acquire them from many places, be it needing a tool for one specific project or being handed down an entire toolbox. They can quickly get out of hand if we don't keep an eye on them.

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Transcript of this podcast episode

Intro  0:07  
Welcome to today's episode of The declutter hub podcast, your channel for super easy, no nonsense advice on how to declutter and organise your home. Please welcome your host professional organisers, Ingrid Jansen, and Lesley Spellman.

Ingrid  0:32  
Hello, and welcome listeners to Episode 140 of the Declutter Hub Podcast.

Lesley  0:37  
I'm Ingrid. And I'm Lesley.

Ingrid  0:39  
If you have clutter and want to sort it out, this is the show for you. Now, in today's episode a Lesley and I are talking about decluttering tools. Lesley, I have nightmares about garages full of stuff and sheds full of stuff. We'd like this overflowing toolboxes. That's what I division, I get what I hear decluttering tools, but I'm kind of like it, although it's not really my realm of things I'm responsible for I kind of like doing it. It doesn't bother me.

Lesley  1:13  
No, I think it's one of those things, isn't it? When you see a garage looming? And it's going to be that's getting down to the real nitty gritty, isn't it getting down to the finer details? So it's something that you'll probably leave until the end of your garage? Declutter, isn't it. And then you would hone in on the actual toolbox, or depends really how many tools you've got, and how many boxes you've got. And I'm talking about just one toolbox. There can be multiple, but it's a rarity, to be fair for us as professional organisers to be let loose on tools, isn't it? Because quite often, there is someone in the house who really likes the tools and doesn't want those to be fiddled around with by some external person coming in. And so, after my own tools, I have decluttered tools for clients. And it is kind of depends, as you said, not my favourite thing to do, but you can make a real impact with it.

Ingrid  2:03  
Yeah, well, I can assure you one thing, listeners, I have multiple toolboxes in this house, there's a whole kitchen cupboard that is dedicated to tools of stuff that can't be out in the garage. There's lots of stuff, my husband is quite a handy dry, I must admit. So lots and lots of tools in his house. So in this house, I'm not really responsible for those kinds of items. That's kind of the one thing I don't touch. But in my clients houses, I've definitely come across them at some point. And normally clients are like, Oh, no, I don't want to do this. But I'm like, it's so satisfying. But I think the problem is that decluttering tools can be quite a tricky one, because we are not really sure what it is, what how, what we need to keep what we need to do with them. So we're also going to talk a little bit about donation in this podcast, aren't we? Lesley?

Lesley  3:01  
Yeah, we definitely I will talk about donation later. I mean, I think that one of the things that I wanted to talk about really is the fact that if you've got a really messy disorganised toolbox, it can be a barrier to getting projects done, can it and so it is important to be able to put your hand quickly on what you need. And in order to do that, then you need to organise your toolbox effectively. So you need a decent toolbox with categories within it, or you need several toolboxes with tools categorised into each box. It depends, you know, Ingrid's husband is a big DIY. So they've got a lot of tools in their house. We don't have loads of tours in this house. But we still have enough. And you're not I mean, we have enough for what we need. But to be fair, we've probably got too many for what we need. Because we tend to get people in to do things. And so if you get people in to do things, which I invariably do, because we're not very handy in that many things that we can do. But DIY is something that I choose not to do. And I'd rather get somebody and I've got my my handout, your project management donor. So I've got a donor on top, really, and so why would I do that myself? My lovely Tarik to do it. So yeah, so we don't really do many tools, but you still need a basic tool collection, don't you even if you're not an avid DIY?

Ingrid  4:16  
Yeah, and it's interesting, mostly because one of my clients actually had a couple of little tools. I mean, she lives in the flats. And with me, she only needs like a screwdriver and a couple of bits. But she didn't have a toolbox. So we actually ended up ordering a tiny little toolbox for all of the things to go in together instead of them kind of living loose in different random places. And then when you need them, you can't find them. So if you don't have a toolbox, maybe this podcast will kind of make you thinking about I actually need to get a toolbox so I can put some stuff together. Or maybe you realise that already listened to us thinking oh my goodness gracious. Yes, we do have a lot of tools in this house. And we've learned that we don't know whether we're coming and go we don't know how much we have. We need to Short this out.

Lesley  5:02  
Yeah, you hit the nail on the head, we'll hit the nail on the head

I'm on fire already. Oh, sorry, that's just made myself laugh with that I shouldn't be laughing at my own jokes. But anyway. So I think the key to toolboxes is containerization, isn't it and that's what we're talking about. What we don't want is a random assortment of tools dotted around everywhere, because a lot of times they end up in our classic junk drawer don't know if they're inside the house, or they randomly scattered around a garage or a shed or an Understairs, cupboard or a basement or a loft, wherever that might be. But we need to bring them together in an organised fashion. And so the volumes are going to be very different depending on how you operate in your house. So as Ingrid says, she's got loads and loads, I've not got many. But nevertheless, what we need to do is we need to bring those together. So we know exactly what we need. And that's what we're going to talk about, isn't it?

Ingrid  6:01  
Yeah. But I mean, I think we need to start at the beginning, literally, I mean, how many tools do people have that never even see the light of day, they think they can hand it down through the generations as well, you know, somebody passes away somewhere, or somebody realises I'm getting too old to do all of dry and kind of the whole shed full of its contents, and all the doors kind of goes to the next person. And then we end up with like, loads, I mean, how many screwdrivers and hammers and measuring tapes and nails and bolts? And how much do we really, really need?

Lesley  6:43  
I think the problem is sometimes in the absolutely right that we do get these things handed down. They almost look like antiques, don't they sometimes, you know, when you get these really old tools that have kind of been hand turned or whatever in the kind of 20s and 30s, they look sort of too good to get rid of. And that's where we struggle. And there's, quite often there's that sentimental attachment to things because that might be your dad or your granddad or your grandma. And I'm not trying to be sexist here, but mainly in the 20s and 30s. It might have been your granddad or dad, but not maybe not your dad in the 30s. But you know what I mean? There tends to be some kind of sentimental attachment to these tools as well. So tools like who knew once again, there are going to be emotional attachments to tools. It's like, it's something as simple as that. But we still have that kind of yearning and that our I remember my granddad doing that in the shed and used to tinker around and have a lovely day. And so we don't want to get rid of them for that reason. And so it's hard. But what we need to do is you rightly say, Ingrid, is we need to be realistic. So we need to look at our current lifestyle. And we talk about this all the time and say, Do I need this tool selection in my life? Or am I being ridiculous? If you're like me, and you get someone in to do 90% of the things apart from maybe putting a picture up, then you don't need more than one simple toolbox. If you're like Ingrid's husband, who puts his hands to anything, then you're going to need a good selection, you're not going to get rid of things. So the first thing that we need to be is honest, because these are the kinds of things that we tend to keep forever in a day, just because our neighbourhood.

Ingrid  8:20  
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Absolutely. And I, I completely agree with you, because I think we actually have some tools in this house that belonged to my grandfather, that belong to my husband's grandfather. But there are just a few because everything gets upgraded. Now we've got you know, power drills and everything needs to be plugged in. And it's yes, rechargeable batteries. But even you know, when we buy a new drill, because the drill, the batteries from the old drill have run out, you can't get of course, that type of battery anymore. 10 years down the line, you upgrade that we kind of keep hanging on and kind of keep putting it away like, oh, yeah, yeah, it'll do at some point. It's like, we've got an upgrade. It's like with capsules, we keep the old catalogue, we've got a new one. It's the same with power tools and things like that. So the volumes, I think really add up. And you know, how many? Honestly, how many screwdrivers do we need, we need to have a small one, a larger one across one, one kind of sturdy one a tiny one. We don't need 45 different screwdrivers, if unless you're a builder, and you do this for a job. You know, there is I think a balance between having some stuffs you can sort those dry jobs out to your house, or oh my word. I've got every toolkit under the sun and I only drill a couple of holes like once a year and I do a couple of small repairs. And I think that's where you can kind of really win on space.

Lesley  9:47  
Yeah, definitely. So first things first, realism take a realistic look at your life, what it looks like. What do you do in your house who does what and what do you need? And then try and pare it down to minimum, take out those sentimental things. If you do have a sentimental screwdriver or a hammer from your granddad, that says sentimental value, bring it into the house, put it in a shadow box, you know, you might not use it. But just something like that would be really cool and really cute to have on your wall in some kind of gallery wall or something. Use it don't just leave it languishing in a shed or a garage to get old and mouldy. That's not what we want to do. We want to look after these things. So sentimental things can be brought into the house and brought into it, you know, and display to things like that. I think one of the things that we wanted to talk about Ingrid was where are these tools? And where's the best place to keep tools generally, didn't we?

Ingrid  10:40  
Yes, so what we see is indeed tools scattered everywhere. So I think when you're listening to this podcast, and think, yes, I do have a couple of in the living room, and some of them, I'll get them all together and put them in one place. You don't need to have every tool under the sun in your house, you need to have a screwdriver, an allen key, a measuring tape, maybe some picture hanging stuff, a hammer and a radiator key. I mean, you can solve probably about 90% of small little DIY things when you can those couple of bits together, either in a tiny little toolbox or a drawer or somewhere on the in your Understairs cupboard in your own utility room, find a place where all the little bits and bobs live, the rest of your tools probably live in a garage, in a shed in your basement, and maybe even in your loft, but somewhere kind of where they can all be together. Now, I actually I kind of mentioned in between kind of talking about so that I have a cupboard in my kitchen, where several tools live, because there are some power tools that my husband does not want to be I have out in the garage, so they live inside, I unfortunately don't have a utility room. So we decided that one of the kitchen cupboard was going to be kind of a DIY cupboard. So you have to be smart, not everything can be put outside, but has to be kept indoors. So think about that. When you decide where's this stuff going to live?

Lesley  12:20  
Yeah, I think you've almost got a kind of you know, so it might just be that you want those things to hand. So there might be some some issue with putting them outside as well. Or you might just want a few things to handle other things in your shed or garage or basement, again, need to be realistic. So my basement is kind of part of my general house, is it a big deal to me to walk down one set of stairs to get a tour when I need it? Do I actually need it in the kitchen, yours is different in work because you've got to go out in the cold to a garage, open the garage up. And there's barriers down, we talked about barriers all the time, there's no barrier to me at all to go down into my basement to get a tool. So for that reason, all my tools live downstairs do not mean because it's just not a big deal. If I need something, I can walk down one flight of stairs, and I can get it. But we have this kind of inbuilt need, I think to feel like we should have a screwdriver and a kitchen drawer and a junk drawer. And that's not always the case. And so extend that realism to thinking about your space and thinking, how hard is it for me to actually get to those things, if there is a barrier, if you do go have to go outside in the cold or the wet or you have to pull a garage door open all those things. And we understand that those are barriers. Yes, it's sensible to have some stuff inside. But that may not be necessary, it may not be necessary for you to have an overflow tool storage at all. So you may be perfectly fine. If you live in a flat, for example, you may not have a bulk storage space at all. And so you might have to have everything in your flat or in your condo or whatever mountain you so think about that. And and it's all about this compromise, isn't it again, you know, have we got? Are we are we prepared to give valuable space up in our home to tools that we may or may not need?

Ingrid  14:00  
Now decluttering tools is is not an easy job, isn't it? I mean, they're part of like you said they're part of a garage. They're part of a shed, they're part of like our bigger storage areas. It's a big job, isn't it literally?

Lesley  14:15  
Yeah, these kind of what we like to call book storage areas are really difficult to declutter. We have a whole course don't we in our membership all about decluttering what we call book storage areas, so garages lofts basements, because it really does involve planning, logistics. You have to think about categorization really carefully. We have to think about labour lens zoning, all of those things come into play. And the tool box is an interesting one because that's tends to be right at the end. As we've said, that's the fine tune because if you suddenly start doing your toolbox in the first 10 minutes of doing your garage declutter, you'll never get any further will you so definitely needs to almost be done as a separate project in some in some ways, if you're breaking it down.

Ingrid  14:58  
Yeah, yeah, definitely. I couldn't with you more. An interesting thing is, what I see a lot as well is that people do jobs inside the house. And then the tools keep lingering inside. They never make it back to their original places. Like, why are all these tools here? Oh, yeah, we did a DIY project three months ago, but the tools are still here. We haven't gotten around to putting it back due to all the barriers. So that's also I think one of the jobs that you really didn't see is like, let's put the back to where it belongs. And then immediately, you start to clear space, and it starts to feel better. And yeah, that it really works, doesn't it?

Lesley  15:39  
Yeah, no. And the other interesting thing, really about decluttering tools is that they get muddled up with lots of other things. So almost like household accessories, let's call them. So things like masking tape, things like little brackets that you have, when you build a new IKEA unit that you didn't, you decided that you didn't want to fix against the wall, but you still keep it just in case you ever do. And so we have all those kind of extra little things again, quite often in a junk drawer, or in a toolbox that we keep forever in a day. And by the time we get to them, we can't even remember what the before or why we. And so we have a lot of fiddly things in toolboxes as well, though. So they're not just big things, hammers and screwdrivers, because they're a bit more simple. We have lots of little things that we need to go through. So it's a big, dare I say it laborious job.

Ingrid  16:32  
It's not an easy one, it's the same as when you kind of dive into stationery, but other people have lots of stationery. It's also kind of like you need to do a lot of categorization. And then kind of deciding what is all this stuff. What does it work for? What does it go with? One you won't need it? Or when you're doing their assayed wires, you know, which equipment does this go with? Does it still work? What is it for? Why do I did not put a label on this bag when I got it?

Lesley  17:06  
Yeah, I think that's it. And then if we start getting down to things like nails and screws and all that, then we really, really are fine tune in as well. And those quite often just get thrown into a toolbox. But the interesting thing is for many people, when they do start a DIY projects, the first thing they do is go out to the hardware store and buy a new set of screws or a new set of nails or whatever and actually completely ignore the ones that they've already got. And so that's where containerization and organisation and categorization can really help. Because it can stop you from re buying things, which is what we typically do when we absolutely don't need them.

Ingrid  17:42  
Yeah, yeah, definitely. Now, listeners, there is good news in this whole story. Because you can actually donate your tools can do. So it's not like, Oh, I'm going to do all this sorting and decluttering. And but then what then what you can donate your tools, but it just involves, you can't really bring it to a charity shop. It's not really an item that you kind of use. The first thing is not that you think, let me bring this to a charity show. But there are lots of places you actually do want your tools. And yes, of course, you can use your local freegle or freecycle. You can check with your charity shops. But there are actually specialist places where you can donate your tools.

Lesley  18:27  
There are and I know that you've done some Google search, and this morning having Ingrid and you come up with a great list of things that surprisingly, can get donated.

Ingrid  18:36  
Yes, so I actually found it. So honestly, I did a quick Google search. And the first kind of, I had an eight options. Half of them are in the US, half of them were here in the UK. So for example, here in the UK, there's tools for Alliance tools with a mission work eight Men's Sheds. I mean, apparently there's sheds where men hang out together, and they kind of fix and build stuff. And they would love your tools in the US. You've got Habitat for Humanity, goodwill, the Salvation Army, the Vietnam Veterans of America, they all request tools. So then I had a little look and I went okay, this is great. And I will put all the links that are found in the show notes that you can find on our website. So you can have a look at that. But I think if you are maybe in Canada or Australia or anywhere else in the world, have a little Google donating tools in Canada, I'm sure something comes up and they've got all overviews on those websites what they need. And I kind of saw a common thread of items so they all want just tools your builders tools, carpentry tools, electrician tools, motor mechanics, plumbing, garage workshop power tools. A lot of them also wanted to have garden equipment, so shovels and spades and forks and those kinds of bits. sewing and knitting was popular sewing machines, vintage or antique machines. or manual machines overlockers. And with knitting electronic or manual equipment all really wanted them wool, and things like haberdashery. So I was surprised at how I mean, I knew there was a need out there, but the detail that they put on the website of what they want, and what they don't want is very clear. So if you're thinking to yourself, you know what, I have a tool project here to just a tiny bit of research, it's not difficult to find out and maybe find out okay, whatever, it's our I'm not close enough to it, then you can always go I'm going to try my local free cycles and free goes and audios and all of those things in a local apps, because people definitely want these items. So if you can save them from going to the to the tip or the recycling centre, I think it's really well worth a try. But it does involve a little bit of investigating.

Lesley  20:59  
Yep. So I know you're going to add those into the show notes. Ingrid. And you're going to find those and declutter hub.com forward slash podcast forward slash tools. So if you want to know more about what Ingrid has been talking about, or what types of things you can donate in your neck of the woods, and have a look, and Ingrid will put some of these resources that she's found this morning on Google.

Ingrid  21:20  
Yes, definitely. Lesley. So I think that's it for this episode, isn't it? I think I think we've we've shared with our listeners all that we, we kind of wanted to chat about this topic. Is there anything else? Let's see if we are have we got it all covered.

Lesley  21:38  
Now that we've got everything covered, I mean, I just wanted to reiterate that we do have if anybody's like yes, I totally want to declutter my garage, my shed my loft, and I want to do my tools, then we do have a course for that in the membership, our membership you can find at members dot declutter hub.com. And that course is available to everybody who is a member. So do check that out. If that's something that you're you think yes, I'm totally going to do my garage loft or basement and tools. Yes.

Ingrid  22:05  
Now that's it for this episode, listeners. Thank you for being here. And we hope you've enjoyed listening and are inspired to take action. If you want to have more handy tips and advice. Have Lesley and I come and join a facebook group the declutter hub community with less than Ingrid's every Tuesday at four o'clock. We have a Facebook life. What would Ingrid and Lesley say so if you're looking for some more handy tips and advice with common listening and tune in to us chatting about a different topic each week. Now, if you've enjoyed this podcast, please share it with others, and you can find the sharing buttons in our show notes. If you don't want to miss our next weekly episode, subscribe to the declutter podcast and it will come into your notifications each Friday. So thanks for being here, and we'll see you next time.

Outro  22:59  
Thanks for listening to this week's episode of the declutter hub podcast. Check out declutterhub.com for more inspiration. Don't forget to tune in next week.

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Neri says:

4 June 2021 at 8:22 PM

So appropriate this blog on tools and so realistic I feel quite justified now Ingrid keeping my power tools in the linen cupboard ! They would rust out in a month here in the island
Time to tackle the messy throw it on top tool and paint cupboard!!!
Thanks for the tips I’ll allow 1/2 a day to collect everything in the house !

Reply
1. Lesley Spellman says:
  
  6 June 2021 at 8:22 PM
  
  Thanks Neri – let us know how you get on xx
  
  Reply

Episode 140 – How To Declutter and Organise Workshop, Shed and Garage Tools

Episode 385 – Life Skills for Kids with Katie Kimball

Episode 384 – The Reality of House Clearance

Episode 385 – Life Skills for Kids with Katie Kimball

Episode 384 – The Reality of House Clearance

Episode 382 – The Power of Journaling – Clear Your Mind and Find Your Focus

Episode 381 – How to Start That Decluttering Project now you’re retired

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