Simple Hacks For A More Organized Shop/Garage

hey everybody adam here with hometown acres welcome back so today we're going to be talking about garage organizational hacks now this garage right now we've been here about three years and i'm not the most organized person when it comes to my garage workshop but today we're heading over to everybody's favorite special guest on our channel neighbor doug's place his garage is spotless and i knew the first time that i saw it i had to get you guys over there and show you he has some great ideas for garage organization and i'm hoping to steal some of his garage organization hacks and bring them back to our shop here anyway let's head over to doug's and we are here this is doug's shop here he's got a nice little outdoor entrance to it howdy ho neighbor are you filming of course i am i'm always filming that's a downside to being neighbors with a d-list youtube celebrity oh me or two you always gotta wonder when the red light is on you'll be careful what you say around me i'm way down at the bottom so yeah this is uh doug's shop here and i can tell you guys doug did not spend any extra time cleaning up here every time i come over here it is this clean looking so what the reason i wanted to bring you over here is the first time i came over here i was completely blown away at just how what's what's the saying you have everything has a place and there's a place for everything exactly yeah it's just one of those things that it makes it easy to keep it clean yeah and i'd be a hypocrite to say that it doesn't get messed up this is a workshop right i use it every day i mean yesterday i was welding a big project up here and there was stuff later on but when you have a place to put stuff away it makes it easy to clean it back up yeah and if you're in the middle of a two or three day project it doesn't make sense to put everything back away but when you're finished what you're working on put everything back away in its place yeah one thing that i found with doing that and you're 100 right you don't put it away if you're gonna use it the next day but what i've found is you start stockpiling tools up on the on the workbench and whatnot and and at the end of the day i kind of look and say okay what am i not going to use and put it away right that way when you're done with the project you're ready going for dinner or whatever you don't look around and go oh boy this is overwhelming because that's what most people have a problem with is they're overwhelmed with the mess that they've made they just don't know how to clean it up so you know you always try and take one step at a time it just makes it a little bit easier there's some things that you know i'd like to show some of your viewers and i know you we had talked about it the things that i have in the shop aren't for everybody but they work for me right it's really you guys all have your own individual shops you have your own workspaces areas man caves if you will whatever you want to call it so some of the things i do aren't for everybody but for me they work and really that's all that matters i'm not going to go tell everybody as as another famous youtuber says it's they call it you should yeah instead of youtube so yeah i'm not gonna do that you know we've all got suggestions you know this is your channel and you'd ask take and we come over and do this yeah well like i told them in the intro this i'm looking to steal some ideas to implement in our own garage because i am i'm not the messiest person in the world but i am not anywhere close to being the most organized so looks like doug actually did a little bit of prep work here for us and uh made a list of some different garage organizational hacks so what's what's the first one you got on the list there where do you want to start uh there's a there's a handful of things that i really enjoy and if adam pans up to the ceiling behind him here there happens to be a vacuum cleaner hanging on the garage door rail i'm uh i'm one of those types of guys that yeah you can you can buy expensive things but if i can figure out how to make it i'm gonna do it and what's unique about these particular vacuum cleaners is that they're a remote control vacuum cleaner so somebody might go home in the world do you turn the thing on well another part of the organizational thing that i have is there's a thing over there that i keep all my attachments [Music] but put that on and it doesn't need to be on this is this is actually a pool vacuum hose i just extended the regular hose so i can get all the way around the shelf but the neatest thing i seen and a friend of mine had one of these your on off button is is on the attachment itself it's a remote control on the attachment that's pretty cool and then when i'm done with it um this is just a ladder hook that i mounted to the side of the garage door framework and when i'm done you just put all your attachments back and i made this out of the board and hot glue gun pvc pipe to it and it's a place for every attachment so here's one thing that we'll go through with the garage and i'll explain to people you don't work here you don't ever do anything in this garage but when you look over there you know something's missing don't you yeah something's not right with that yep at the end of the day when i'm going through after i do clean up or whatever i do i look down and i go wait a minute one of my vacuum attachments is missing where did i use that oh i used it in the other side of the garage walk over there and that's usually where i left it so so you've got you've got double the chance one if you don't see it sitting out you see that it's missing from where it goes so you either see it from one spot or the other so you've got twice the chance of remembering to put it back i like that so so we've got the vacuum here and i liked it so much and if he does a quick pan there's another one up there and i use that one for cleaning out it makes it really nice for cleaning the cars out you can reach into both sides of the vehicles and i like that because i've got a shop back in my garage but i'm constantly fighting with extension cords and wheeling it around and moving it around it's nice that you've got a hose long enough to reach every corner of the shop here that's that's a cool hack there that way the vacuum stays in one place you're not yanking the ground and it's the cords aren't getting caught under wheels you know you're not yanking and pulling that pulling cord out of the wall and at just about every garage he's got an outlet up there for the door opener so it works out well to mount the vacuum cleaner up there yep i'm gonna steal that that's a good one yeah that's one thing i find that takes up you know a decent bit of room in your garage too is is the shop vac yeah it's it's always in the way you're always moving something and that's that's one of the things that i learned in our business that we owned is is wasted motion wasted movement is unproductive and you don't get paid to do that right i've kind of adopted that into my workshop just because of so many years that we did it at our shop where you you know you have things and you look at the motions of of the project or the people or whatever and you try and reduce that as much as possible so real quick give give people a little bit of background of where you learned a lot of this stuff so you owned an injection molding company right towing tool and die and injection molding we actually had a tool shop here and we had an injection molding shop here so one fed the other but through those things our efforts took us into lean manufacturing and if you guys look that up you'll see that lean manufacturing is a way of setting things in order and they call the 5s you know it's it's shine standardized sustain safety is part of it and there's there's a couple others sometimes there's 6s sometimes there's 5s yeah it's just if you get a chance look that up and look at 5s and you can do that anywhere right most people do 5s and don't even know it the silverware drawer in their house is 5s there's a place for spoons there's a place for knives there's a place for forks yep that is 5s you've standardized it and you've made it so that when that piece of silverware comes out of that drawer and whether you wash it use it clean it whatever you know that it goes back into the fork portion of that tray yep that makes perfect sense basically what i've done in the garage is is you've taken that and you've made spots for everything and i would be again it'd be a hypocrite to say that there's a spot for everything here but there's a spot for 95 of everything here so basically your workshop is one big silverware drawer i try to keep it that way and people will say who's got time to do that who's got time to to do all this what you've done i'm so busy i can't do that i can tell you right now that if you've walked around looking for something for 15 minutes and you do that every single time you walk into your garage you've got time to do these things that that i worked on and there's millions of other people out there that have these same hacks or garage ideas or whatever it might be but if you've stopped and you've looked for something you've got time to do this yeah this took me 30 years yeah 30 years of trial and error and i mean i literally will put something up use it there for months and months and months and go it just isn't working out it's it's not really in a spot where i utilize the tool that's one other thing that that if you guys are setting up your garage or your workshop area put those tools or keep those tools in the area of where you would normally use it all right so let's start working our way through your list here doug what's uh what's the first thing you want to show us here uh some of my scene on pinterest believe it or not and yes pinterest is for guys if you're looking for different ideas and things like that it's not just uh a site with pillows and quilts and anything like that as i was leafing through printers one day i come across this thing and i've always had an issue with bench grinders meaning that they're they always leave a mess they're always in the way so you got a nice nice big clean workbench um and i actually had this top made out of stainless here at a local place where i combined two benches bolted them together and then had the stainless top made for it and okay just gives me extra room and it's nice and flat but the reality of it is is when you bolt your bench grinder to it that bench grinder ends up at some point time getting in the way of something you want to do let's say you have a long flat board you need to set on there and the bench grinder's in the way it now renders your bench pretty useless right so i was looking up different bench grinder ideas and this is not my idea but i did build the setup and all it is is a couple of old or not old i bought them over at home depot they're big barn door hinges okay and then so what i did is i i bent them and welded a plate to the bottom of the hinge and then i have a way to bolt the bench grinder to that so i use a little strap here that's up underneath the bench undo the strap and flip the bench grinder up you can use a bench grinder do whatever you want um you can see how the hinge was bent here and then i welded a plate to it so it molds right around the the table there yeah and if if you guys want to do this idea you got to take your thickness of the bench top here and create that thickness to the bend in your hinge so what that does now is is now i can come over here and i can use either one of the bench grinders and you'll see how i've routed the cords they go back into an outlet back there but they're just tacked up with a couple um c clips or whatever hinge that around hook the strap to it that's one thing keep it tucked out of the way even with my my little chainsaw chain sharpener that i have it eats up a good two foot of of my bench that i have so that that is a very very handy hack there for sure the other thing is is you've just done done your work whatever you're sharpening a chisel you're sharpening a chain a punch whatever and it does leave the mess of the grit and everything so when you're done flip it down out of the way hook it up and now you can come through and you'll see that in several locations throughout the workshop i've got little handheld wisp rooms so you don't have any nooks and crannies underneath your bench grinder you can't get to you can sweep off the entire table yep and now that bench is ready to go again for the next project um we'll go from the bench grinders to another mobile idea that i come up with and i didn't get this one off of pinterest i just just had the idea but when you have vices on your workbench and you're doing projects you use your vice all that makes it nice but you need to get in here and do something so what i did was if you take a look under here these are a bolt-on reese trailer hitch okay all i did was before i put this top on it i countersunk big bolts i think there were 5 8 bolts down through there and mounted the trailer hitch setup so now if i don't want that vice air needed out of the way now it's flush to the edge of the table that is pretty genius too i like how your entire workbench is kind of modular yeah the other thing i can do is let's say i had a specialized different uh butterfly i could take that one the pivots and swivels and i could move it down here if i was doing something that required some right hand work or whatever yeah i'm going to ask you guys at the end of this video what is your favorite hack that doug's got here for us so as you're watching this keep that in mind try to pick out which one's your favorite i think he's got like 10 more here for us so all right so moving on from the bench grinders and the removable vices what's next here um clamps wood clamps metal clamps there's uh i don't know any kind of fabricator or any kind of woodworker that doesn't have clamps and they all have good storage ideas as you can see space is always a premium this garage is really it's it's 18 by 30 to sum that huge to others that's small that have you know 10 bay garages that they work out of right you know this is not that it's a it's a a bay and a half wide and 30 feet deep so to try to find places to to hide things if you will or to organize them it's always a challenge so with that being said the different styles of clamps that i have most of these clamps are a wood style clamp that you know you use on wood projects or different things like that and then the other ones over here are for when i do a welding project or something and so to keep those organized now you can see that on here it's basically a u-shaped bracket again if i don't have to buy it i'll make it right this is made out of a old tree stand framework the handrails that come off cut them up weld them back together and taking something that was pretty much useless and making good use out of it i love repurposing things and then looking at it and kind of giggling knowing what it was made out of yeah you look at you look at something like this and you go well that was that was made out of an old tree stand hand rail yeah and then even even the one for your metal clamps here it's not overly complicated it's a couple of blocks that you screwed to the bottom of the cabinet and then a metal strap underneath it yeah it's just an eighth inch by oh i think an inch and a half wide piece of metal strap i got over to scrap yard and basically all you do is you undo the clamp hook it up in there and then close the clamp back up and you know they're they're kept there and they're organized so that makes it easy to put everything back and then these these style clamps they just kind of hang on that strap yeah they're pretty good to go and then i guess moving over here to the right you've got all your your nail guns um now what'd you use for these pvc pipe yeah these are a pvc pipe this is pretty much everything air related here that i have air tools and whatnot so you know you got a finished nailer here and one thing i think you mentioned was when you do this take the time to label everything so you know that that tool fits in this slot whereas this one here is a little bit bigger you know this is your your bigger one all right i'm gonna do a test here adam here okay where do they go i know the big one goes here let's see this would be the next biggest one uh porter cable this is stanley stanley bostitch yep uh right here doesn't fit it's the other thing is is you you make it so it fits too there we go dewalt right there yeah boss stitch and porter cable there you go look at that the guy doesn't even doesn't even work here on a daily basis and he knew exactly where they should go struggled with the first one but we got it so we can go from there on over to the the cordless tools cordless and electric tools and i don't like keeping those in a toolbox drawer because the cords get in the way they get banged up they you know you got to take two of them out to get the bottom one and again that's the you know my time i'm not getting paid for my time here and that's why i think it's crazy that people don't do it in their own businesses or their own personal lives where they're actually getting paid by time to do things so the more you can organize better if we take a look over here and again this is another pvc hack for uh cordless tools and i know a lot of people have done this you know it's it's all over the internet this is just my setup and what worked for me so you know they're all labeled 3 8 stubby impact m18 it fits in there and this this is actually just an old uh home depot cabinet like a like a closet type of cabinet right i just hung it up on the wall because it gave me a great uh distance and and whatnot for storing these things so you know any any of the cordless tools i think in one of your last videos you saw the the smoking gun yeah yeah you might look at that you go how in the world could i make something for pvc well that took me a while because if you look at the setup there's a place in here for the top handle of it and then the tool itself in there fits so you know it's just a matter of spending a little bit of time figuring out how to fit in there and then getting it to hang up i've even got things like you know the cordless bandsaw yep there's a little piece up here to let that handle go in there and it keeps it in place right everybody has a table for a skill saw yep so what i did was i just took a shelf and i cut out a notch for the bottom of the blade put a little metal bracket in there bennett for the support so that board wouldn't slip or fall and then they just slide in so there's a place for them yep um honestly looking over on the side here you've got all your sawzall blades organized up spot for all your batteries yeah um again you can buy battery holders for dewalt for m18 for milwaukee's and all that i made them out of a little piece of angle iron so it's a little piece of angle iron a piece of flat bar stock and then the other pieces of stock and i just measured it out to see what would fit and work for my need now if you go on the internet and you look for these things they're upwards of ten dollars a piece yeah per per battery holder and i thought you know what i can build it for cheaper and i'll have fun and make something cool yeah here's another idea that i really liked well this is a necktie holder that you have in your closet right all i did is on these bottom ones i pulled off the little black cap that goes on there and guess what fits on there perfectly sawzall blades they go on there um the other thing i did is i just took little cut little cut sections of pvc pipe and this is where i put all my jigsaw blades so each jigsaw blade you know there might be four of the same kind they go in one and then different kinds so they're all set up so that blade goes back into the right spot yeah now one other thing you wanted to show over here was your paint can shaker oh yeah let's do that that's kind of fun so again i keep that over here because it is basically it's a sawzall blade yep okay so i took to mount that on a piece of um shelf bracket so the hooks of a shelf bracket would fit in this so i just opened up the bend on it i riveted the blade to the bracket and then i riveted a hose clamp now the one i used to have on here was a finger clamp you could do it it broke and that was in a hurry and wanted to use it but anyhow sawzall blade take out the sawzall put the blade in there yep take out your can of spray paint just give it a couple twists to tighten it down this was open a little further but yep get a good good mix with it when you're done with it pull that off put it back unscrew that put that back if i can see it and you're ready to go and not that you guys needed any proof that doug did not just clean up for this video but if you look inside here even all of his paint is organized so if we were just faking this i'm sure over at my place this would be a cabinet jam full of stuff to make it look pretty but even even when you start digging into the cabinets everything's organized i'll tell you what this idea came to me we redid our kitchen many years ago and there was no way in the world that i wanted to get rid of or sell the cabinets and i went i can use those in the garage so this was a pantry from our house kitchen that i just brought out here and reused and it works perfect for paint cans you need something out of there you've got whatever paint you want right um for anybody that's you know oh you walk into a shop and they've got welders and they've got heating sources and all that this actually keeps those contained if there was fumes coming out of a leaky can then there's a problem i would have to deal with but the reality of it is is no sparks no flames are getting into that right some people will do you know in in factories and industries and uh manufacturing they're required by law by osha to keep things like that in a metal fire safe cabinet homeowners are not right it's just the way it is but when you take that same concept that if it could blow up at work it could blow up in the garage so i just keep all those flammables in a pantry here that are away from sparks and away from flames good point all right doug so what's next on the list let's let's focus on the center of the shop here all right this is what i i call a layout table or workbench some people would um but i call a layout table if i've got something big that i'm either doing out of wood or out of metal it gives me a four by eight area to lay something flat to make it square and all that so when i when i built this actual bench i built the metal legs for it and then this is just the two by six boards with a uh a piece of laminated on both sides from home depot 4x8 sheet from home depot the neat thing about that is and i'll show you in a second is when this side gets scratched up destroyed paint whatever i can take and flip it over and use the other side right so it's it's not attached to the table i'll show you why it's not attached to the table because when you build anything out of you know uh lumber there's always a gap there's pocket it's for the strength of it but there's also a way to utilize that so i can slide this over and i basically just put some boards underneath it and now i can store long poles these are this is a a closet rod paint poles you know long extruded pieces of wood and anything that's that's long that generally people would stand up in the corner gets in the way i just made a spot for that in there and it also works on this side as well [Music] so i can store things in there this is my jig i made for cutting crown molding um some pieces of pipe and i'm a pack red i don't throw anything away yeah as long as i can find a place to hide it or store it then i usually keep it but one thing that helps if you like this idea this this bench top is i do have one small board on the end of it and it's fixed to the table what that does is that keeps my top from sliding around and it keeps it squared up so whenever i need to move it back it's like a fence on your table so exactly that's exactly what it is i just i slide that back and i look at where it's at at the end and i stop right there so along with that on the table um well you'll see two garbage cans right keep two in here one is for non-burnable one is for burnable right uh it's just i've got the ability to burn trash here so i do that anything neat about this layout table is i just put two eyelets in it and then this is that brown paper you would find at home depot that people lay on the floor for when they're doing construction in their house so they don't tear up the floor right well guess what else it works really good for if you're painting something on your workbench and you don't want to get like that you can pull that out right and now you've got a surface you can paint on without ruining your the surface of your your bench then when you're done throw it away crumble it up and put in your trash can that's right there so that makes it nice for that the other thing that i did with this bench is if you come down here it's on wheels everything in this shop is on wheels except for the cabinets those are kind of a fixed item uh the workbench the layout table uh the toolboxes the miniature mill everything's on wheels and what that allows me to do two things is i can level this bench up perfectly so the top is flat so if i'm if i'm welding or fabricating or doing something on the top of the bench i know that the bench is perfectly flat and level and my pens and pencils don't roll off of it right but anyhow it's on we also like once a year i like to take and wheel everything out clean the floor up rinse it down do whatever so it makes it a lot easier to do that so like i said everything in here is on wheels and you can see those are on the same similar type of wheels right you take and you crank up the leveling pad so it lands on the wheels and you can move it all out all right so let's move on to your safety glasses here well i'm a i'm a big advocate of safety glasses just for the simple fact that i can't lose another eye so if you don't know the story doug doug lost uh vision in one of his eyes from a skid steer accident so yeah i actually if you guys didn't catch that video i'll put a link up above where doug tells the story i keep a stark reminder around here of of the shovel handle and skid loader story but yeah that's that thwacked him in the eye there on the skid steer that's for another day so but anyhow the safety glasses i like having uh you know a little forefoot fluorescent light over the workbench if i'm doing something you know i'm getting older harder to see and whatnot so i like to have a little bench up there or a light up there and i got to thinking you know i leave my safety glasses i'm i'm at an age now where i need reading glasses i need safety glasses people that come in here and do something with me i can hand them a pair of safety glasses and it's just they're easy they're up there out of the way they're not on the bench getting scratched there's a place to put them when i'm done using them i'm not walking around a shop going where did i leave my safety glasses yep so and on top of that and when those are worn out which the plastic lenses always get worn out there's a drawer with newer safety glasses there you go you buy them by a 24 pack and they're cheaper yeah you go through them so yeah you got to have them there's a reason for them so we've got got the different glasses i've got my fabrication glasses if you will where they're just the safety lenses with the reader and i've got my welding glasses that are a full reader when i'm doing up close you know you need your lawnmower glasses you need your regular reading glasses if it's a windy and dusty sunny day out i wear my goggle glasses if it's a dark gloomy day i wear the clear ones so it's just a nice way to set that up and then along with the bench i've got don't ever let your wife throw away a a junk cutting board yeah the good plastic ones are perfect for if you're cutting out stickers or something that don't want to ruin the top on your bench right so don't let your wife throw the old cutting boards away and then i keep some cardboard for doing layouts this is a really unique item that uh i believe they sell on amazon it's made by swag off-road it's swag off-road and i've put some shielding around it just to help keep the the metal chips going straight down but what it is is they make them for just about any type of portable band saw the milwaukee the dewalt ryobi all that and it's it's a little screw knob up underneath that screws into the the guide fence of the bandsaw and then there's a slot back here that that fits into this particular piece of equipment in my shop i use almost daily for when i'm doing something cutting metal or whatever it's so handy to have and it's a nice replacement for a big band saw that a lot of people can't afford or don't have in their shop i don't have one but i use this thing all the time yeah i put some shielding around like i said just to keep the chips and stuff down along with the bench grinder and the bench grinder again if you look at the the side back here you've got a trailer one of those trailer hitch mounts i can pull this thing out move it somewhere take it somewhere do something with it this is fixed on here because this to me it's it stays here so i've made brackets mounted it to the bench that that go out with the bench when i clean up the shop right and then i i made some brackets that hold this fiberglass tray i got used from a local manufacturer that does molded fiberglass trays and what the nice thing about this is and as you can tell yes i've got projects pieces of scrap and projects laying in here well there's there's the proof right there that you actually use the shop yeah and if you look at the floor it's not a mess it doesn't have chips in it that you're walking through and dragging all through the shop i've caught them and that's usually what you want to do is is look at the problem where the source of the problem is what's causing the mess and something that i think just about everybody's ever seen is you go into a public restroom you look at a public restroom and some of them have the paper towels and the mess of the paper towels the garbage cans are overflown there's there's paper towels all over the floor and then you go under the restrooms that have the air dryers yep i'm not a fan of the air dryer but those kind of companies looked at the source and they went okay we've got to employ somebody to come in here and empty the garbage cans that's a fee the garbage uh company that comes and takes it as a fee right we have to vacuum and mop up the floors and all that if we just go to an electric air dryer yeah we've got the cost of the electric but we don't have the mess anymore right so um a couple other things there's a you know the fence i mount that on the bench for that band saw so i've just created a place to keep that this is pretty simple to come off of the back of it's just some shielding i made out of coil stock yep and what it does is it hangs over the back with a simple old bungee strap hangs in there so when i and again here's another brush right put it at the piece of equipment you're using it when you got the mess on there you can actually brush it back in here hits that like a laundry room or a laundry door and it goes down and it lands in the proper tray yup so it's just a simple way of keeping that clean and that's about it for the bench so i just paused the camera here for a second and doug was showing me something and i said i was just laughing at this doug show them this air air hose reel that you've got here well you know there's guys out there that spend thousands and thousands of dollars on their garages to make them look pretty and like i said in the beginning of the video this is not a pretty garage this is a working garage for me and i had this hose reel that uh for an air hose that that i used and it was mounted on the wall over over there and it was just kind of in a way it was a nuisance because i would pull the hose out and now i got the hose laying on the floor doing a project i'm tripping on it it's in the way whatever so i thought and just like everything else there's got to be a better way right so i'm looking up here and i'm thinking you know the more i can get up out of the way the easier so this isn't even one of those fancy retractable air hoses you just pull it out and it is what it is it stays there but but now if i need to do something on the workbench it's here it's out of the way it's not dangling on the floor not tripping over it if i need to take it outside the door to air up some tires i can do that when i'm done i thought well you know i'm not half as tall as adam i can't reach that how in the world because i mean i had to think about this when i mounted it up there and i went well you know again here's another little pvc hack you just a piece of angle pipe that's long enough for my short arm and this is the part that made me laugh fits right over the handle there and then you just crank it up and then you hang this back up where it needs to be so that goes into another uh item that i had to come up with is i had to supply this hose reel with an air line i wanted a moisture separator on it because i do my powder coating with this airline and i thought well i don't really want an air hose dangling through the garage so i found a piece of pipe that fit that air hose inside of it and i made another bracket and again it's hanging from the garage door rails and it's very well supported from the ceiling those aren't the factory inch long bolts through there so what i did was i run that air hose through this pipe back around and through this pipe and then it goes up into the ceiling over to the air compressor that's in the other part of the garage now that does two things one it gets that air hose out of the way it's not visible you're not tripping over it doesn't look like crap but it gives me a place to hang things too so if i'm painting something and i want to let's say i just painted up these headphones i paint them now i have a place to hang things to dry so i utilize the garage door rails or the brackets so be to turn them into hangers and you can see over here that i've got all the different hooks and hangers and whatnot here's something that a lot of people you can go find those at home depot all day long they work great for doing whatever but if you just add a little hook to them it hangs right on the rail it works pretty nice so one solution with the air hose actually ended up solving about four or five other problems for you it created a bunch more opportunities i come in here and i and i do some miscellaneous powder coating so you need a place to hang it after you've you've powder coated it to cool off same with painting it but that gives me a spot to hang things off of those and they're they're plenty of strong i don't know how many pounds you can hang off of that but i also don't try to hang you know a tractor off of it right you got to understand the limits of things so so i want to show them i think this was probably my favorite part like i said i'm going to ask you guys at the end what your favorite hack is but my favorite when i first came into this garage was your tool your tool um [Music] your toolbox is here so open up one of those drawers and i want to show them what you did with with your tools first off i want to start by saying yeah it's a snap-on toolbox yeah they're snap-on toolboxes i bought them used right you can go out and you can find people that that need to sell a snap-on toolbox do not pay the crazy costs off the truck for a snap on toolbox yeah i bought them used brought them home cleaned them up and whatnot um again this what i'm going to show you here goes back to what we learned at our business and that's the set and order and that's having a place for things and i know there's going to be people are going to say i don't have time to do that i can guarantee you that if you're looking for a tool or you lost a tool or you're wondering where you left it i guarantee you'll have time to do what i did here you figure all the all the times you spend 15 minutes looking for something you add that up over time if you just do this it's gonna save you that time in the future guarantee it yeah guarantee it and it will make you smile yeah it will make you happy it will make you feel good when it's done so before you open that up again everything is labeled every drawer has a label on it so you know exactly what you're getting into before you even open it up go ahead and open up the screwdriver drawer okay so what's nice is i can tell if i'm outside and i've got a buddy here adam's here i can say hey can you run in the garage and get me a screwdriver give me a flat tip screwdriver and he's like okay walk in look at the toe boxes and go oh okay screwdrivers not drivers they're all kind of in the same family so you open that up and you're like wow who in the world has time to do that yeah here's why you have time that screwdriver might be gone you i might have used a screwdriver yesterday over in the other garage and went where in the world did i leave that and then i can say to myself wait a minute i had a screwdriver over in the other garage realized it was missing because you see the cutout i'm not the guy that invented this right the guy that came up with it i'm just one of the thousands of people that did it and understand the benefits to it and are extremely happy you took the time to do it absolutely you know to cut out this one particular layer might have taken an hour to cut it out what takes the longest is taking all your tools and setting setting them on a piece of foam that's the size of that drawer and organizing it visually your own liking based on what tools you have and saying okay that's what i want and then from there basically you just take what i did was i take one of these cheap old exacto knives and i ground off the back edge what that allows you to do is take and cut a tight corner okay so basically you lay that on there and then you just take and poke down through and follow the path of that tool and you pull out that piece of foam right it's that simple now you said this is multiple layers of foam so your bottom layer is just a full sheet right and then your second layer is the cutout and what that does is it gives a soft place for the tool to sit and it allows you to cut all the way through your upper layer it's it's a lot more for the cutting purposes of that now here's here's a secret that a lot of people don't know about when they do this yes the organization that makes it all nice guess what other than other than that little piece my screwdriver stayed in their spot right they're not sliding around and put it up and everything was all jumbled together so it's it's a part of the organization i know i've had either one of my sons or my wife come out here borrow something take it into the house and use it to you know do a light switch or whatever it is they were doing with it and i'll come by and i'll be you know that's missing and i'll come out here i'm like wait a minute i didn't use the screwdriver where's my screwdriver at first place i go is talk to the other family members and say which one of you borrowed the screwdriver and they look at me like how did you know they know exactly how i know yeah because it's missing it's not in the spot i was supposed to be in um well and then the other thing we were talking about is when you lend tools out so right now you said you've got a a wrench out to a buddy right yeah uh he says hey can i borrow your impact wrench not a uh torque wrench not everybody has a torque wrench laying around and i i have them and so i did that with my ratchets as well and now you can see that this one's missing right and he might have it for two or three weeks right i'm like i said i'm getting old i forget things and i might walk out here and go oh where did my you know torque wrench go or my impact wrench whatever it is torque wrench you know oh wait a minute oh my buddy's got it yeah so he's got it and i know it's gone and again you know you cut that out to the sizes you need and again you guys are gonna say i'm crazy i got too much time i'm telling you that when you run around your shop and you're looking for that wrench because it's in a pile of a mess somewhere and you don't know that it's missing out of your drawer and yeah that's a snap one there are some things that i buy snap on and there's some things that i buy harbor freight yeah depends on what the item is you buy the snap on because they're going to last you a lifetime in their lifetime guarantee other people yeah craftsman has lifetime guarantees and whatnot there's just preferences i like the snap-on wrench i could get that but when you leave a snap-on wrench somewhere and lose it you get pretty bummed out man i just i just laid 100 bucks down somewhere i don't know where it went yeah so that's another reason that keeps and the other thing is is i've always heard the number one way to have your tools walk off or walk out of your shop is by lending them to friends they forget they borrowed it you forget you lent it to them and i like the post-it note idea of you know exactly where it's at you can still lend tools out but you know where it's at to get it back i know who to call yeah i'm gonna say hey you still got my wrench you're like uh yeah yeah i'll go find that bring it back yeah so but you know and and that's that not again i'd be a hypocrite to say that every one of them this one it doesn't have a spot yet because i don't know if i want to put it there or where i want to put it so what i've done is i just lay it there yep okay is that going to work you know you may go out and buy another wrench or whatever one thing that i i can't stress more than anything is when you go out and you buy a tool and you do the cutout for it you all of a sudden become very responsible for that tool yeah you don't try not to break it because in order to replace that screwdriver you got to find the exact same one again heaven forbid 10 years later they don't make that anymore then it's then it starts to make this look kind of junked up and whatever right so i know that okay i i want to take real good responsibility of that particular screwdriver i want to use it for screwing things in i'm not grabbing my hammer and using it as a chisel right because i don't want to break it because i know that breaking it would screw up what i've got going here right so that's just another thing of keeping that organization now here's where you see those those two items they're in cut out foam whatever but you know knife sharpeners they're not in cut out foam but it's it's in there and organized solder gun stuff that's all in this drawer it would be very hard to do foam cut out for but it's in there now if this solder was missing no i i might not know it for a month and might not know it goes back but that's a buck 50 right you know so that's you know it's not not an expensive item safety glasses um drill bits there's no way i've come across you could possibly put drill bits in foam but that drawer is full of drill related items right and they're all expendable tooling you break it you throw it away you get a new one right you don't do that with wrenches sockets and ratchets and so on um tape measures things like that they're not in foam i could do them in foam but i have more than more than what i need i've i've got an infection for you know when we went over to your house i brought two of them with me yeah because you always set a tape measure down and you forget where you put it yeah you go back to the tool bag and grab the second one yep but you know just something as simple as keeping these yardsticks and this that i keep them in is really meant for hanging or for putting uh wrenches in okay it's a wrench holder but it works really well for doing this and before i did that all of those were just laying down in a pile i had to pick up four of them to get to the next one so uh so going on to the next door you know you you got other things crescent wrench pipe wrenches i don't like putting those in with my normal standard wrenches so we got that all my crescent rings just go in here and i'll show you another drawer these rails that are made for holding pliers up really work nice for crescent wrenches as well again it's a space-saving thing that you know i don't have a drawer full of crescent wrenches laying around in there now again the bigger ones yeah you can't really tip them up and set them in there but it's again it's a place to put your crescent wrenches and different adjustable wrenches and i like to keep standard and metric wrenches in different drawers so these are the standard wrenches and then you can buy a lot of these wrench holders on amazon and whatnot this is just i mean can we just sit and appreciate how beautiful this drawer oh my god no what you can appreciate is when the 13 16 is missing yeah you and i both know it's missing right and you know we we don't even have to have to wonder where it went because we know it's not there so you got you got the standard you got the metric wrenches and you know even even like this little set i made my own block for them just a piece of wood put some notches in it with a table saw and put it in there so again that's one thing that i couldn't find to purchase so i made it myself yep um vice grips i like to keep those in a different drawer and again that didn't get put back so i know that that goes in there you know again the whole theme of everything is when it's missing or when you've used it there's a spot for it it goes somewhere yeah we talked about the drill bits yeah we've got you know a drawer full flashlight they're not cut out right they're not you know you can go get a flashlight for six to ten bucks somewhere you know that's using garage so you got to be selective of what you spend your time on now if this was if this was our business yeah i would have a spot cut out for those flashlights because as a business owner you want to know when people are either stealing flashlights or you're breaking them all the time or they're wearing out or whatever not just keep getting invoices saying that i just had to buy 20 flashlights today where are they all going right you know so it depends on the atmosphere you're in and what you would do um hair dryer glue gun electrical type components in there uh crimpers things like that yep uh this is something that i did want to show you guys that i showed you in that drawer it's for different pliers and they make these you can get them on amazon and what it is is it's a i don't know if i can pick this one up without them falling but it's a rack if you can get a shot of that it's a rack that holds pliers and it holds them standing up and the best thing about that is is it gives them it takes up so much less room and as you can see i i like pliers and you know there's there's there's a plier for every job but it it holds it up it keeps it in place and it gives you a spot to put them so and this is another thing that uh when one's missing again you can see that it's missing and you know where to go so so i've cut these racks you can cut the racks to whatever size you need to fit your drawer and you know there's tin snips there's wire cutters there's pliers there's chain you know there's just everything in there uh pry bars no i didn't cut those out yet i was thinking about it i laid the drawer out and i went that's kind of a pry bar is an item that yeah you do break once in a while or it gets ruined so i didn't i didn't do them in foam um so i would be hypocrite again by saying that everything's in foam and everything's organized it's not but i've got a drawer for it and it's you know goes into its place dental picks i don't know about you guys but there's a dental pick for every job it's you know you get in there and again these things break they get destroyed the ends of them get bent um you throw them away you use them to heat them up to pick something out so they're a disposable item that's why they're not in the foam um my allen wrenches though they're expensive right even even the cheaper pack you buy a pack but i've got it cut out there's cutouts for those that way you know they're missing and then ultimately the manufacturer of these also that when one of them is missing you know it too and i didn't do that right manufacturer did that so there's there's benefits there and again it all goes back to organization you know if somebody wants to boil the allen wrench go ahead and take it i know it's missing or i know it's gone so again those are things and i've grouped up some of the bigger metric ones cut them out put them in there and zip ties they're not they're not in foam but there's a drawer full of zip ties everybody needs a zip tie yep the same with the drawer with duct tape in it um some kind sometimes electronic tools these are the tools with cords yep that are seldomly used that i don't have a place over there for um you know there's there's a whole bunch of other things you know the carpenter squares if you take and you line them up not everybody has two of the same one but a lot of times i'll find a reason to come across with two different ways on a carpenter square doing setup when you do when you do metal fabrication and you do woodworking you got to get creative on how you're going to hold or clamp something on occasion so you need sometimes two of things um you've got uh quite a bit of uh toolboxes here for different kinds of nuts and o-rings and grommets and you know in essence i'm kind of a cheap person i don't like to pay a lot of money for things that don't hold a huge value but you know this this shelf here this is made out of i actually made the shelf i cut the shelving down and made them in here because i wanted a way to pull these out now they make shelves all day long for plastic trays but they didn't make shelves for these cheap um harbor freight trays right so i made my own trade to fit them i'll give you a prime example of this organization compared to this organization i need a plastic push pin it's easy to pull out i need a a toggle that drives me crazy happened to move four things to get to the one on the bottom and i could put this back on top and it still wouldn't matter i'd still need something out of the water right no matter what it was on the bottom yep so at some point i will make some kind of shelf system so these pull out independent on their own well like you said this this garage shop has taken you 30 years to get to where it's at and you're still not done you still gotta add shelves for this section here and yo and i don't want to say this for everybody but you will never get it right the first time yep you'll do something you'll set it up and you'll be like yeah that works nice and then three months later it's like it really isn't working well for me i want to rearrange it and i've had this garage has been rearranged and moved in different things in different places um over the years and it's just how you set it up might work for you at the moment but then three years later you get a new tool or you get a a drill press or you buy a welder or a change a bench and go wait a minute it might work better over there right don't be afraid to put something uh in one spot thinking that i might move it later just do it and see how it works and you'll know it from daily going in and out of stuff right all right so a lot of what we talked about for these garage workshop hacks you know as nice as they are they can be a little bit time consuming to put together like those cutouts and stuff you said you know the majority of your time is going to be spent putting them on the rack and and organizing them the actual cutting it out only might take an hour let's talk about some things that people could do you know right now today with their garage and it wouldn't take a whole lot of time to improve so what's some kind of the smaller miscellaneous items all right and i want to want to touch real quick i don't spend three and four hours a day in the house watching football yeah or sporting games i come out in the garage and they do things out here so i don't spend a lot of time in front of a tv screen um i love watching hometown acres on youtube so that's my my evening and early morning rituals i'll hop on my ipad and and see if hometown acres put anything up new see if uh you know uh dirt perfect did or let's dig 18 and you know i'm throwing plugs for all these guys mike morgan hometown acres you know those are all really enjoyable i kind of actually wait and watch those yep but the rest of my time is spent either outside or if it's a rainy day cold day something i spent it in here in the workshop and that's where i find the time to do these things i don't waste my time in the house i don't or watching tv i don't waste my time at bars things like that i come out here in the garage this is my little slice of heaven but as adam was saying the quick little things you can do and a lot of it goes towards keeping the the shop organized after you've done all your setup so yeah you still make messes you still have tools and everything laying around we went through a lot of the the tool storage and the ideas for that but little simple things is it's just having brushes around the pieces of equipment that you're using this is on here just by a little magnet just find a piece of metal drill a hole in the brush so when you're done using that piece of equipment you can clean it off real quick again there's a brush here there's usually piles of chips all over the top of it just clean it up brush it down the chute it's good to go i keep brushes here for when i'm working on the workbench it's it's right there in handy so when i made the mess i can clean it up right away i keep the garage the garbage cans in the center of the garage for the big stuff it's always easily accessible to get to instead of tucked away in a corner or in the other side of the garage yep you know there's a there's a little hand brush on the side of that tool box so if i'm doing something on the workbench over there i can clean it off real quick it makes it simple and easy there's a brush on the on the mill here that's for cleaning the chips off on the mill um there's a brush and a small little miniature dust pan on the drill press i go in here and i made this box try to go under it too and what that does is it keeps all my various pieces of blocking and it catches the the drill chips right um but the one thing i would say for everybody to have in their garage and when i went over to your house the other day i looked and looked and looked and i couldn't find a broom but keep a broom simple easy item a broom with a dust pan and a handle yep some of you guys might say well why i've got i've got this all right at 50 plus i'm not doing this all day long it's just it's too hard you don't see people in shopping malls you know people see the the janitorial staff in schools walking around with these things there's a reason for that the people who are brooming all day long yep yep when you have a mess on the floor this is so much easier i got something over here i need to clean up i can do it and then i just dump it yep that is a simple garage hack that everybody should have yeah friend walks in he's got dirt all over his shoes and it comes across the floor all i have to do is walk over and clean that dirt up yep no bedding over nothing it's just simple have it somewhere and have a place that you always keep it don't put it here and then next week have it there and then next week have it there have a spot that it always goes to yep that way you can go find it and it's there and readily available here's another item that uh you know i think everybody should have in their workshop their garage their house whatever uh it's a cart and we used to use them in our plant all the time where people would move product with them or they would take tools use it to work off and whatnot but i use a cart all the time and i love having it you know my my um toe boxes are all on wheels but i'm not going to wheel them outside i'm not going to wheel them across the yard or the driveway to work on something so i take a cart and let's say that i need to you know based on whatever project i might need so i might grab the impact wrenches and throw them in there i might grab whatever sockets i was going to need throw them on there and a wrench or two the big guy and i might head over do my job work on the car work on the piece of equipment whatever it is but this makes it so much more convenient and when i'm done it's easy to put the stuff away for two reasons one i can wheel it right to the area where i got it out two because i've already organized my drawers so it's easy to clean up after a project nobody has an excuse that oh i didn't have time to clean up i mean literally when i'm done working on the stuff i know where they went i know where they came from and i know where they go and i'm done i've cleaned everything up for the day and it's again it also goes with simple things like okay this is your basic drill press so what i did for that is is i made a couple of spots that have the the clamp holders these are you know they go into the table for a drill press clamp and you know you don't even need to make clamps for certain things my drill vices are their own clamp built in you just clamp it right to the rail of the yep the stand so things like things like keeping your welding helmets organized a place to put them when you're done place to put your air chuck right okay because when i use this i pull the air hose out and i go out or you know the tire filler i'm always using it outside that's why i located it right next to the door i'm not going back there looking for my air filter when it's over here and that's something that i want to show just real simple is this is an air collet that fits on the end of airline works perfect for holding the tool just a quick connector just use the quick connect that you would have on the end of your airline for that yep and with this air filter that's a valve stem out of a car you just pull it through a piece of metal your quick connect yeah there's your your tire filler but to put it away you just put it back on using the same kind of components that they would hook up to that you're using it on right so i know this video is probably running quite a bit longer than our normal programming but uh as you can see this is something that doug is very passionate about it's something that i have the desire to to do better with in our shop but i was telling doug these ideas are not something that just come to me in the shower but they you clearly have an affinity for this kind of stuff you know and we were talking about that earlier i i'll come out here in the day and i'm working on something and you know something might bug me boy that's a pain doing it that way or boy that makes a mess or whatever so you know i'll sit there and i think there's got to be a better way so what do i do i look on youtube or i look on pinterest or i look somewhere out in the wonderful world i was born before the internet so this whole wonderful world of the internet is kind of neat you can go out and see what other people did i'm not the inventor of all these ideas some things i've got some inventions that someday i'll patent and sell and do whatever those are those are coming but you know using the internet to see what other people did youtube's fascinating to me to watch those channels to watch your channel to watch those things and say oh wow i didn't realize you could do it that way or i didn't you know i didn't understand how to do that so i guess that's kind of what prompted me to allow adam and hometown acres into my workshop because i've gotten so much from youtube and the internet and been able to come up with ideas and i thought all right i'll let you in here and see yeah you know you can see what i did i i see it every day i like you said i'm passionate about it because everything has become there was a necessity for it and you know the the mother of all and you know necessity as a mother of all inventions and i actually commented on one of captain clemens videos his his uh winch cable thing that he made out of an old jeep frame yeah on the back and i said you know i said this is just fabulous because you know the necessity to be able to to haul in a log and he created this winch to do that i applaud him you know that's just it's just those things that you look at and you're like man that makes you excited to to come up with a solution for things like that so guys i know this video is quite a bit longer than what we usually post but uh i wanted to bring you guys over here and show you this and i can promise you even though this video is pretty long this is just scratching the surface of some of the hacks that doug has out here in the garage do me a favor down in the comments below let me know what your favorite hack was and i hope to see you guys on the next one i hope you guys enjoyed this one if you did give us a big thumbs up click that subscribe button we'll see you on the next one thanks for watching [Music] you

Channel: Hometown Acres

Views: 644,402

Rating: 4.9026027 out of 5

Keywords: Garage, Work, Shop, Organization, Organize, How to, Tool, Storage, Bench, Wood, Hometown Acres, Tools

Id: mFYJFgOIRCM

Length: 66min 35sec (3995 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 07 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/RushFactoryGarage]

So many good ideas! Now if only I had the tools lol

[u/DangerousChemistry47]

I watched this and enjoyed the work that went into this. And kudos to the guy and everything, but this level of attention to detail to set this up and maintain will have to wait until I’m super retired and just absolutely bored out of my gore. I can and can’t wait for the time in my life if that makes sense. Again, well done.

[u/blakeusa25]

I think he needs all those tools just to work on his garage.....

[u/82jon1911]

This just popped up as a suggested video for me. I'm about to put up a 20x20 shop on our property for equipment storage and would like to eventually put up a 40x40 for wood/metal work, gym, and working on cars.

[u/cassinonorth]

Hour long video but it's an incredible watch. Not the prettiest garage you'll see but some seriously cool organization ideas.