We have all been there. The rose bush has been overgrown for weeks, months maybe. You have been telling yourself for a while that you are going to cut it back to tidy up the garden. Today is the day. You jump out of bed full of energy and good intentions. Slurp down a cup of coffee and rush out into the garden, unlock the shed and grab the pruning shears...except you cannot find them. You spend ten minutes rummaging around in the vague area where you think you remember leaving them last time you used them. But they are nowhere to be found. The wife must have had them.

'Right,' you tell yourself. 'This place needs a tidy up.' So you start flinging out the tools, the bikes, the kids toys. 'Ah, this must be them...oh, no, it's a trowel.' You kick one of the bikes in frustration, ending up with a painful foot that gives you a limp. 'I give up!' you blast. Later, an almighty row ensues with the wife when you accuse her of losing the pruning shears and she claims she has never ever used them.

The basic problem is you have far too much stuff in your shed. So, the number one rule when organizing it is to make sure you do not try to put too much stuff in there. Then you need to start to decide what goes where. Since my disorganized days I have put up a series of shelves and cupboards. Each item is put in a logical category. For instance, I have a section of one cupboard for the tools I use for flowers and shrubs; another for my vegetable and fruit patch; another for the shears, brushes and so on I use when clipping the hedge. Each section is well labelled. And when I have finished with a tool, I always make sure I return it to the correct section.

Big items such as the lawn mower are left out of the way up against a wall or hanging from a sturdy nail and hook. There must be plenty of access room - if not, you will start knocking things over as you take something such as the lawn mower out of the shed. I also have a rule. The only two people allowed into the shed are me and my wife - and we both adhere to the tidy, organized rules we have introduced. When the grandchildren come around to visit and plead, 'Please, grandad, can we go into the shed,' I change the subject and offer them a game of soccer down the park. Bikes are banned from our shed. Instead, we have constructed another wooden shed in which we keep them and nothing else.

Sheds are a great necessity for keeping all those garden tools and implements. But unless you keep everything neat and tidy in an organized manner, they soon become a nightmare and sap any enthusiasm you might have for gardening. Organize everything from day one and just take a little time and effort every time you need something to keep up your high standards.

Learn more about this author, Phil Hill.
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