Beekissed
Mountain Sage
Thought I'd start a dedicated thread to the practice of making homesteading life easier through decluttering, organizing and generally keeping things on the homestead where you can use them and find them easily.
In today's world it's become common place for people to joke about being a hoarder, but it's not really funny at all~massive and overall hoarding and the clutter that ensues from it is a drain on one's resources in many ways~financially, emotionally, and physically. If you can't find something and really need to use it, folks often go out and buy another one...it's just not good sense to have several of the same item mounting up over the years and you can't find any of them.
Emotionally it's stressful to have a growing lack of space to store things, being unable to find things when you need them and to have to look a the chaos every time you go into that space. It gets overwhelming and people often become depressed over it. Homesteading is hard work but it gets much, much harder when you can't even find your tools.
That stress can affect one physically, not to mention the danger of having to dig through clutter to find something and getting injured when things fall, when a snake bites you, when you get cut or punctured by something you didn't know was there when you reached in your hand.
Feel free to post here about your organizational efforts on the homestead, whether it be in the outside realm or the inside, in pantries and cupboards. It's all our work zone and that needs to be efficient and organized to get the work done properly. It's incredible how much time is lost in a day while one is trying to locate a certain tool or material to complete a job. Not funny and that all adds up over the year to a lot of wasted time and stress.
I'm a fan of ergonomics and have found that paying attention to the ergonomics on a place can make your life much, much easier and anyone having to replace you on any given day and do your chores finds it much easier also.
Ergonomics~
At its simplest definition ergonomics, it literally means the science of work. So ergonomists, i.e. the practitioners of ergonomics, study work, how work is done and how to work better.
It is the attempt to make work better that ergonomics becomes so useful. And that is also where making things comfortable and efficient comes into play.
In today's world it's become common place for people to joke about being a hoarder, but it's not really funny at all~massive and overall hoarding and the clutter that ensues from it is a drain on one's resources in many ways~financially, emotionally, and physically. If you can't find something and really need to use it, folks often go out and buy another one...it's just not good sense to have several of the same item mounting up over the years and you can't find any of them.
Emotionally it's stressful to have a growing lack of space to store things, being unable to find things when you need them and to have to look a the chaos every time you go into that space. It gets overwhelming and people often become depressed over it. Homesteading is hard work but it gets much, much harder when you can't even find your tools.
That stress can affect one physically, not to mention the danger of having to dig through clutter to find something and getting injured when things fall, when a snake bites you, when you get cut or punctured by something you didn't know was there when you reached in your hand.
Feel free to post here about your organizational efforts on the homestead, whether it be in the outside realm or the inside, in pantries and cupboards. It's all our work zone and that needs to be efficient and organized to get the work done properly. It's incredible how much time is lost in a day while one is trying to locate a certain tool or material to complete a job. Not funny and that all adds up over the year to a lot of wasted time and stress.
I'm a fan of ergonomics and have found that paying attention to the ergonomics on a place can make your life much, much easier and anyone having to replace you on any given day and do your chores finds it much easier also.
Ergonomics~
At its simplest definition ergonomics, it literally means the science of work. So ergonomists, i.e. the practitioners of ergonomics, study work, how work is done and how to work better.
It is the attempt to make work better that ergonomics becomes so useful. And that is also where making things comfortable and efficient comes into play.
A little soppy underfoot from all the rains but still a day to get things done. Today we are cleaning out the shed, a yearly undertaking to attempt decluttering and organization on the homestead. This year is less involved than the last and the last was less involved than the year before that. My big goal for this building is that the yearly cleaning just involves sweeping and wiping the dust off of things, while everything else is still in its place and there's a place for everything. That's the grand plan! 
There's just something about taking things that are cluttered, dirty, rough and nasty and turning them into something clean, smooth, and neatly placed that gives my soul a deep satisfaction. I also love it when Mom and I~and sometimes my kids get in on it~work together as a team all day....usually she and I are working on separate things all day and rarely together. 
The first few times I did this at other homes, I couldn't believe how freeing it felt. Then I started to wonder why in the world I had waited so long to do that? 
And these are only the buckets we store in the shed...we've got 4-5 smaller water and feed buckets down at the house. 
