A few years back in Zymurgy (March/April 2011, to be precise – go, go handy Zymurgy Index), I wrote about making your brewery organized and neat and welcoming of brewery activities. (Got a lot of “Man, my wife just saw this and I have to clean up the brewery now. Thanks!” emails for that one.) Well, it’s time for true confessions time – my brewery is a disaster area right now. You know how it goes. Stuff accumulates. Boxes that you’re holding onto in case you need to pack up a classroom, extra furniture as the interior design of the house changes, new toys that you buy for yourself. All of it needs a place to go and when your day is ugly or frantic, the garage ends up being the perfect place to toss stuff, until suddenly you can’t move around in there and it becomes a giant cluster headache nightmare.

So today, I’m fighting back, my weapons:

• A call to the local charity pickup group – aka help me get rid of this crap!
• A push broom
• Mark’s Keg Washer to make short work of the keg pile.
• Some new shelving
• a few stout friends to move everything around for me!

Here’s why this needs to be done. It’s just no fun going into a cramped overrun space. It makes me far less likely to do anything in the brewery if it’s a giant freaking mess. Now, if you knew me 5-7+ years ago, you’d be shaking your head in wonder. Truth be told, I’m still comfortable with a fair amount of clutter. I’m a geeky fellow after all. I have my stuff and I like having it where I can reach it. (aka I’m not an organization nerd). For this new little gift, we’ll have to thank my partner in crime, Aymee. She’s kicked my butt until I’ve started doing it and good for me!

So what do you do to organize and make your brewery more effective and better to use?