Buuuuuut, I gave away and entire pickup load of shit out of the garage yesterday.
I have a good friend that I used to work with that lives about a mile and a half away.
We give and swap tools and materials to each other constantly.
He’s the one that found the vintage Delta drill press at a a garage sale for ten bucks and hauled fifteen miles to my house.
He has a sister who recently bought a second hand store down at the coast and she showed up the other day and gave me a boat load of old wooden handled screwdrivers that she had been collecting out of the things she finds to sell.
Like twenty of them.
As the three of us were sitting around swapping tales a thought occurred to me that I figured would be a Win Win for both of us.
She recently bought a used Toyota Tacoma with a canopy on it and had brought that up, almost empty.
I asked how long she was going to be in town and she said they had some family gathering going on Saturday and this was Wednesday evening.
Perfect.
I told her to swing by my place Friday after work and I would load her up with shit she could sell at this second hand store and make some money off of.
I told her I didn’t want a dime for any of it, she would be doing me a huge service by hauling it off.
About an hour after I got home yesterday here she comes.
I had her back into the driveway and commenced to going through shit.
Old light fixtures, a vintage Craftsman bench top compressor that works, one of those industrial type fans that are two foot across that sits on the floor, an industrial shelving unit with a custom rolling stand I built for it, plus three or four of the old Brace and Bit drivers out of the approximately ten I have laying around
My entire collection of old Ryobi power tools, the batteries and the charger went into a huge plastic storage box and into the shelving unit we laid on it’s back so we could fill it up.
Little projects I had bought off EBay and other places that I had got put back together and painted up like a hand powered grinder with a new 4 inch grinding wheel, a few other things like that, some projects I had never quite got to like a couple more really little hand powered grinders, an antique belt driven bench grinder, some old electric motors, my old shop vac, old hand saws I bought at Goodwill, a vintage Craftsman Miter saw, an old Radio Shack hand held CB Radio, wall chargers by the bucket full, just all kinds of crap that has been laying around that I was never going to use or was just sitting and taking up space.
We had to shove hard to get the tailgate up and the canopy door down.
She was thrilled, I was quite happy to see it all go, especially to a good cause and I told her that I would set some boxes out and start going through shit she can have the next time she comes to town.
Of course you can’t even begin to tell that anything is different out in that garage right now.
The place is an absolute disaster at the moment from me digging through shit to get rid of.
But, as soon as I get my lazy ass out there and start getting stuff back up off the floor and start rearranging it, I should be able to notice a difference pretty quick.
Baby steps.
But I’m taking them.
I am determined to take some space back and get rid of shit like the above that has just been sitting and taking up room that at this point I am never going to get to to finish or am not going to use. Things that I am certainly not going to miss anytime soon.
Plus, now I have a good excuse to replace all that twenty year old Ryobi stuff.
There are other things I would like to get to but it has gotten so bad that I can’t even get through the joint, let alone actually do anything.
Here you thought it would never happen.
Even I have limits and like I said, it’s a Win Win for both of us.
As far as replacing battery powered stuff, I learned from observance that Bosch is hard to beat. Used to swear by Makita but, no more. Dewalt is a joke. Big-assed batt packs like dancing with a girl that’s wearing orthopedic shoes.
I agree on the Dewalt crap. I’m in commercial construction and lemme tell you, those batteries are worthless. The guns aren’t too bad, if you have 2 chargers and 4 extra batteries.
I have their leaf blower. I can chew thru a freshly charged 20v battery in less time than it takes to blow off my driveway.
yup. one of the worse things I ever bought. fucking leaf blower. after buying a new battery for mine in one year.
it died again. so < I now use the ones that came with the drill
and driver. never again am I going to spend a hundred plus for a one year battery. she didn't want a gas one.
she only used it one time, 3 years ago. great , huh ?
yeah, I also gave away a ton of stuff when we moved up here.
small gas grill, lots of hand tools, a couple of workbenches, one was a woodworkers bench I made from rock maple back in the 1980’s
euro style with shoulder and tail vises. a lot of wood stock and metal stock
even my neighbor asked me for the raised garden beds I had.
rain water setup.
although, there are a few of those items I wish I had brought up here with me now.
remember this, you will get more stuff ! you can not help yourself.
Actually, no, you’ve been infrequently griping about lack of space all year.
And last year, chuckling
You saw the opportunity and ran with it.
Why does the old phrase “No good deed goes unpunished ” immediately come to mind? Good on ya anyway Phil.
Like Tex above, I really liked my Makita tools, but the batteries kept wearing out, would no longer take a charge, and replacements were insanely expensive. My Black and Decker have been going well for years now, still run full poop, and I thought they were chinesium junk. Go figger.
I love my Makita 14.4 drill, but two batteries cost more than I paid for the whole kit. The 15.6 Panasonic I bought to replace it, died inside of a year.
To be honest, I have had exceptional luck running Ryobi power tools. My original batteries are over 6 years old, and are still holding up very well. They are made in the same factory as Milwaukee, so there is that.
Leigh
Whitehall, NY
I too have an older 14.4 Dewalt and have three batteries and had the batteries rebuilt with larger and better amp/hour batteries and they have lasted over five years now. I still have a 7.2 volt Makita and had it over twenty years and only on my second set of batteries. It is slow, but torquey as hell
I could use a friend like that around here, but the alternative is to haul all I don’t want to a local auction house run by my BIL.
He makes a cut off anything sold and I get a few bucks here and there.
The hard part is deciding to dump things because as ever pack rat knows, Murphy says that as soon as you dump it, something will come up where that part/item could have been used. Sigh!
Felt a strange jolt yesterday & thought it might be an earth quake. Just the earth standing still for a second. Or hell freezing over.
We all felt it… I thought it was exceptionally strong jolt.
Since I’m on the lee side of the Crashcades, didn’t feel a thing.
Good on ya brother.
Sometime in the next decade, when you finally get the garage in some semblance of order, where you can actually use all of the goodies you have without first moving a whole bunch of stuff to make work space, please post before and after pics.
I live near the other coast and thought I felt a disturbance in the force the other day. I guess I was right. ;-))
Nature abhors a vacuum, y’know…
At least you can get out into your garage. My shits so fucked up in that regard I don’t know where to begin. Every morning I come up with an idea on how to deal with it then after I’ve showered and coffee’d and come out here, I open the door and almost weep and go and set down with my head in my hands. Yes, it’s THAT bad. I think I need outside intervention. This is a problem that started 50 years ago.
Me? L O V E to shop. Some people drink, some gamble, some drug … I SHOP (Goodwill, pawn shop, etc).
Here in small town AZ, there is no local economy. You can sell at the local swap, or on Craigslist. IF you price it at a giveaway price (I deleted my eBay account two years ago. F*CK them!).
Bbbbbut the proprietor of the biggie pawn shop here, loves to trade/swap. Now? I gotts a whole bunch more space in my 10×20 storage locker. And now the proud (!) owner of a Japan/Cold Steel 7″ Tanto.
Signed Happy Camper