Operation Reset - 2026
Sometimes a workshop is so far gone the only thing to do is blow it up and start fresh.
Horizontal surfaces beckon to us all. An object lands somewhere, and its gravity pulls at other objects passing by until junk covers every workbench, table, and spare ledge.
Space is now crammed with stuff that needs to be thrown away or stuff that should never have lived in here at all.
It’s time to take that space back.
Shelves have been steadily losing the battle against chaos for years. Every nook and cranny is filled with odds and ends that didn't have a home. Sometimes it's leftover evidence of old projects. Sometimes it is old projects.
Everything collects dust, no matter what you do.
The cycle of my workshop tends to go something like this:
The shop’s setup reaches a comfortable point of stasis. Things are perfectly well organized, for a while.
Entropy increases. Over time, space fills up and objects don't get put away properly. It happens enough that, eventually, a workspace has to be cleared off in order to get any work done. As a result, far less work gets done.
Deal with it. For like, way too long (however long that actually is).
Acquire some new tool or material or plan an upgrade or modification to the shop’s infrastructure. Implementing whatever this is will require enough alterations to shop real estate to blow the whole place up.
Add the new thing: destroying, repairing, and cleaning up the whole place along the way.
A comfortable point of stasis. Things are perfectly well organized, for a while.
This cycle repeats every 18-36 months.
The 2026 reset is due the acquisition of a new CNC router. It is, for me, a ‘big boy’ machine. A serious upgrade from the semi-homemade CNC I've been using for years. In truth, it's at the mid-to-upper range of hobbyist machines, but it's the most capability I'll ever want in this shop. And it's probably the nicest I ever realistically need to own.
Currently, it’s occupying my largest and most valuable workbench - ‘The Almighty Assembly Table’ (because it wouldn’t fit anywhere else. Though it has technically served a purpose as a landing pad for whatever else need to go, you know, somewhere, it’s capabilities are are definitely being wasted. Plus, I want my assembly table back.
I view the CNC router as a 10-20 year tool, and I'm incredibly pleased with it. But it was commensurately expensive, and it does need to justify its existence.
Maybe I can start by forcing it to build its own table and enclosure? Needlessly complicated, sure, but good practice and probably fun…
However the table is built, putting it in place will require me to relocate the lumber rack.
If I relocate the lumber rack, I need to rebuild the lumber rack.
Before I can rebuild the lumber rack, I must clear out the area where it's going to live.
If I'm going to clear the area, I need to have a place to put all that stuff.
So, I'm cleaning. And I'm purging… some (I swear).
This is just the cardboard I need to recycle. Some of it I've been reusing for years. And there may or may not be a pile of extra-special cardboard that I'm saving.
I shudder to think how many trash cans I'll fill up getting this place back into shape.
We'll see how it goes.
This one’s full of my hopes and dreams.
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