I broke my favorite tool

Same story here, in earlier times my tools were scattered about and I pretended so hard that I believed it, that I could find things faster that way... Right. My son is cut from the same material. My wife, his Mom, is not. And she's very mechanically capable, a serious asset to household maintenance, so I bought her a red Craftsman tool box and filled it with good quality drivers, pliers, wrenches, etc. It lives on the back porch for anyone to use, but boy, if she finds one of her tools laying about, you can be sure to hear about it. It's grown over 30 years and still intact on the porch for us to responsibly use.

But a career working on copiers in customers' offices straightened out my messy habits. You walk out of a golden elevator lobby into a bustling office full of intense people, sharp suits, polish, dangerously beautiful women, no time for nonsense. In the midst of this high end lawyer, accountant, banker, whatever office, with carpet made of imported White Persian cat bellies or something, sits a gleaming state of the art copy machine. Only you know that inside those fancy covers is a mire of black carbon dust, one of the blackest smallest atoms on the chart that is intensely attracted to imported White Persian Cat bellies. And the shift in static electrical charges from just opening the front cover to have a look can propel enough out into the room to make a silhouette of your shoes on the carpet in front of it.

So, I quickly learned good neat work area habits. If I'm doing a tool intensive job, I stop about every half hour and re-pack my kit, check my area, and resume. This habit still sticks with me today so that I detest a messy cluttered work area, be-it around the car or in my shop. My son learned it from me during several adventures into his car engines as we broke skin together keeping the cars of his youth and college years running. He learned it even more in his training to be a chemist and now a QC manager at a manufacturing plant. I can cay, it makes it easier to do good work in my hobby and to be more organized in the pits when it counts. And though I fret when a tool isn't where it's supposed to be, it will turn up. My shop is an old beat up rough building. When Ron Cribbs came to visit, I was all, Oh I wish I'd cleaned up to make a good impression... his first words were, boy, this is really organized. Now if I could just convince my wife I'm neat. Lol
Rusty