Spring Cleaning for my Dysfunctional Garden Cabinet

I wish I had this garden shed. I wish I had the type of yard that could handle it. Maybe. Probably not, really. Most likely that much yard would overwhelm me with the to-do list.

What I have instead is a garden closet, custom made for me by my brother when he was learning woodworking. He did an excellent job creating an outdoor cabinet that would fit onto a small space available on my deck. At the time he made the cabinet, I wasn’t doing extensive gardening and didn’t have many tools other than the basics.

As I’ve begun gardening in a big way over the past two years, I’ve accumulated many more tools. With each addition, I just crammed it in as I could, and the cabinet became as dysfunctional as Ally McBeal.

So after digging out lawn grass for an hour in the slowly expanding sun-bed in the front yard and planting some roses, I decided that the gorgeous weather today warranted a spring cleaning. While the tile was being grouted on my new kitchen backsplash, I spent the day outdoors.

First, I pulled everything out of the cabinet, and cleaned it all with the water hose.

The small tools and junk that filled the shelves on the left side of the cabinet.

The larger tools and more junk that filled the right side of the cabinet to overflowing.

Then I took the water hose to the inside of the cabinet, mainly to get rid of all the dirt dobber nests inside (hate those things, especially after getting bitten so many times last year).

See those mud-nests inside there? How much fun was it to get attacked by stinging terrorists everytime I opened that d**m cabinet!

I sorted through the junk, threw away what needed to be tossed, added some things to my quickly growing garage sale pile, and determined what needed to happen for the remainder to be functional again.

Bizarre pieces of junk were found

Pulling out my wonderful pink power tools, I added hooks for many of the tools to hang off the floor and stay in place. Then I reorganized the entire cabinet, moving a shelf, and making it functional once again (my favorite word…functional). It holds a lot to be less than 3′ wide!

I can actually find things now. And I don't get stung. Much less cussing occurs.

I realized that I needed a small tool bucket to carry my most used favorites around with me in the yard, instead of losing them, leaving them somewhere, and walking all over the garden and house to find something else that I need. I found the perfect container in the kitchen; a housecleaning caddy! It fits into the narrow shelves in the cabinet perfectly, and is nice and lightweight. And best of all, it was free.

My favorite gloves, my knee pad, my favorite trowel and my Leatherman MultiTool get the most use, but I've also thrown in tape for wandering vines, yard scissors, a screwdriver and there's room for my water bottle, too.

I even found a string of wonderful outdoor lights that I had forgotten about. Now to figure out where to put them in the yard.

love the silver with the Texas star

The cabinet is now organized, clean and a wasp-free zone. I love spring cleaning!

Original article and pictures take http://getgrounded.wordpress.com/2009/03/21/spring-cleaning-for-my-garden-cabinet/ site