Post Surgery and an Organized Tool Shed – Thoughts from June 1, 2025 – Part 2

June 1, 2025 – Part 2

As I told you last week, I had my first surgery on May 22. We pick up the story after the surgery and my post-surgery days. For at least the next few days, I would be in Patti’s hands and the cats’ comforting paws.

Patti had to drive me home. She wasn’t happy about that. Even in the next few days, she wouldn’t let me drive. I felt like I could drive and wanted to most of the time. Patti is a distracted driver at the best of times. For the next three days, I couldn’t talk. I prepared for this by pulling up a Word document on my phone and having it read words I typed out loud. There must be an app for doing this, but I couldn’t find one. By the time I typed what I wanted to say, Patti had usually moved on to something else. On the fourth day, I woke up and said a few words to her. I didn’t sound normal, but I was glad when something came out. Over the next few days, I was close to my regular voice.

I took off about a week and a half from work, so I decided to clean up my tools, toolboxes, and shed where I kept many of my tools. A suggestion from Patti helped with my decision to do this. We went shopping for storage containers to facilitate the job. Slowly but surely, I took things out of the shed and started organizing things by putting them in separate containers. While the shed was empty, I swept each of the shelves and the floor. Most of what I was sweeping was little creature poops. It was like black sand was everywhere. At a certain point, I had to put on a mask because of the dusk. If it were easy, I would have used a vacuum, but that would have taken too much time.

Along with organizing the shed, I organized each of my toolboxes. I had a small one for electronic tools, a medium one for regular tools, a large one for plumbing related items, and one that was open that I could pull stuff out of. We got two containers with little drawers, which I used to keep things like different screws, nuts, bolts, and other small items. At one point, I had piles of tools on the lawn table with the toolboxes on chairs around it. I wish I had taken a picture of everything before I put it in the toolboxes. I had to leave it all there overnight because I ran out of daylight. As usual, I only think about pictures when it’s too late.

The next day, I finished organizing, including deciding which toolbox would get each tool. The last thing was going through my dad’s container of little drawers. I had gone through it a few times before looking for specific little screws, washers, or other things. My dad passed away in 2003, so everything in it was at various stages of rusty. In the end, I made the tough decision to throw most of it out. The trashcan was quite heavy that week. I took a picture of the shed with all the tools and toolboxes in it. It felt good to finally know where things were without having to search for them. I took a picture of the inside of the shed so I could show people at work. It would be more impressive if I had before pictures, but at least I have an organized shed to show.