How to Declutter Your Garden Shed, Greenhouse or Potting Bench

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Get those pots and tools sorted now, and you’ll be free to focus on your plants when spring arrives

​Before you succumb to the flats of annuals at the garden center, take a tip from articles that stress cleaning, decluttering and reorganizing your home and do the same for your garden work area 

— whether it’s a potting shed or greenhouse, small potting bench or shelf in the garage. Not only will you learn what you have and what you need before heading to the nursery; you’ll also benefit from a clean, organized space during gardening season.

If this sounds overwhelming, or if the weather makes it impossible to find your garden shed, much less spend time cleaning it, don’t despair. You can do this in small steps or even wait until a warm weekend in May. And whenever you do clean, the reward can be a place that works for how you love to garden.
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1. Make a Complete Inventory of What You Have

The organizing advice for your closets also applies to your garden work area. This is the time to see what you have, clear out what you don’t need and organize what’s left so that everything will be easy to find once you’re gardening in earnest.

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If you have the room, pull everything off the shelves and out of the corners into a central sorting space so you can really see what you have — and not be tempted to ignore those things in the back. Weed out everything that is broken, extraneous or no longer needed.

Now look at what remains. Consider items in general categories: pots, tools, chemicals

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Pots and containers. Every gardener seems to end up with stacks of pots and other containers in a variety of sizes. It’s tempting to keep them all. But if your pots have taken over your storage area, you should thin down your collection.

The first to go should be those that are broken or cracked. Save some, but not all, pot shards from terra-cotta pots for the bottoms of containers if you worry about soil getting out when you water

Evaluate what you really need and use. This might include some plastic pots of different sizes for growing vegetable starts, some ceramic pots for your deck and some terra-cotta pots for the garden. Then keep what you love or and will use. Give the rest to someone who will appreciate them, whether you offer them online, set them out on a curb or donate them to a community garden.

Tip: Nurseries will often take back plastic pots that are 1 gallon or larger. When you head to the store to buy new plants for spring, take the pots with you.

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