Classic News
Matt Tomkins embraces the sheer joy of a tidy workspace
Everything you need to know about what really matters.
Back in March, the nationwide lockdown gave us all more time in our sheds.
I used the time to push forth on my supercharged Morris Minor, which saw the road shortly afterwards. As my newly-built shed has evolved from storage to workspace, however, things were starting to get messy.
Any car in pieces has the ability to spread itself five-fold and fill every little crevice of available space and, before long, you find yourself with nowhere to work. So, I spent the first weekend of Lockdown 2.0 creating a pile of parts and tools from both sheds in the garden, before I broke out the trusty label maker…
A brand new brake master cylinder, two boxed SU fuel pumps, a wiper motor presumed lost and countless other parts showed themselves for the first time in months. Even if you ignore the financial impact of having bought parts twice, the frustration I faced in the final weeks of the Minor’s restoration as
I had to re-order components presumed lost was utterly incredible. And that’s just the point. This hobby should be enjoyable, not frustrating!
The walls of my new shed now host bins of nuts and bolts, all appropriately labelled, spanner rolls in Metric, AF and Whitworth, plus a new workbench that finishes the job. It’s now a truly pleasant place to work.
The old shed is a different story, however. Tools and spares still fill it from floor to ceiling and I have to ask myself ‘will this really ever come in useful?’ Can a load of scrap really be more useful than the Feng Shui of a tidy workspace? There’s certainly a balance to be drawn, but I’ve proved to myself that there’s no point having so many spares or tools if you don’t know they are there when you need them.
‘Any car in bits is able to spread itself five-fold’