The great shed cleanout

Last weekend summer finally arrived. The temperature soared to the high 20's/low 30's, and with humidity factored in it was above body temperature for quite a few days.

As usual we weren't prepared for it. Our air conditioner is under our front porch, covered by a trap door. The porch has windows for the cold winter weather, and screens for the summer. So in order to use the AC we have to change out the windows for the screens and open the trap door up.

Unfortunately we hadn't put the screens in yet as they were buried in the shed. And I mean buried. When we reno'd last summer we put a lot of stuff in the shed. We don't have a garage, so the small 8'x12' shed already holds a plethora of stuff; lawnmower, garden tools, bikes, sporting equipment, and was filled with a lot more that we usually store in the basement.

The first order of business was to empty everything out. Don't judge me - imagine how large a pile you would have on your driveway if you emptied every single thing out of your garage.

I'll admit that there's a lot of crap there, but we do use most of it.

We had that one tall gray shelving unit in the shed, but it was a little narrow and wasn't making the most of the space. So I decided to build a new shelf that spanned most of one end of the shed and sent Alan off to the lumberyard.

Since it was just for the shed and I didn't really care about precision, I had the guys at the lumberyard cut the boards to size for me. I used a 1x10" and 1x12" for each shelf so that they ended up 22" deep and 5' long. Then I just screwed the boards onto 2x4s cut to size.

I add 2x4s to each end as supports, and had a set of shelves. Then it was time to move everything back into the shed. This took at least twice as long as it should have due to the heat. I had to keep stopping to rest as the yard was so sunny and hot and humid. I love summer heat, but when the humidex takes the temperature over 40°C (104°F) I start to wilt.

I did manage to get everything back into the shed, and not any too soon - just after I finished a rainstorm moved in.

It's looking pretty good now, and it's nice to finally be able to easily access my gardening tools. The shelves hold all of the small gardening stuff and the boys toys, with enough room to the left of the shelves to stand all of the shovels and rakes.

And the opposite end stores the porch windows, our old screen door that we haven't yet reinstalled at the front, our bikes and the hammock. 

The mess made me grumpy every time I opened the shed door to get something out, so it's nice to finally have this all organized.