There's a particular quiet that settles over a garden in late autumn. The last of the tomatoes have been brought in, the lawn has slowed to a crawl, and the shed door sticks a little in the damp. Before the cold really bites, an hour or two spent sorting that little wooden room pays you back handsomely in March, when you want to be sowing rather than hunting for a missing pair of secateurs.

Start with a dry morning and an empty floor

Choose a dry, still day and pull everything out onto a tarpaulin on the lawn. It feels drastic, but seeing the whole collection at once is the only way to make honest decisions. Sort as you go into four piles: keep, repair, pass on, and bin. Broken plastic pots, rusted-through trowels and mystery tangles of string can all go without guilt.

While the shed is empty, sweep the floor and check the basics. Look for daylight coming through the roof, soft patches in the floorboards and any sign of mice. A shed that leaks or floods will ruin everything you carefully store in it, so fix those problems now, while the shelves are bare. If the floor sits below ground level, stand a wooden pallet or a few bricks underneath your storage so nothing rests directly on damp concrete.

Clean, sharpen and feed your tools

Winter is the right time to give cutting tools real attention. Work through them one at a time and enjoy it — this is the sort of job that feels satisfying rather than tedious.

• Remove the dirt first. Scrub blades and heads with a wire brush, then wipe with an oily rag. Sharpening a gritty blade simply blunts your file.
• Sharpen the bevel, not the flat. Use a diamond file or flat file on secateurs, shears, hoes and spades, following the existing angle — usually around 20 to 30 degrees. Three or four steady strokes is plenty. Never sharpen the flat back of a blade; that is what keeps it running true against its pair.
• Oil the moving parts. A drop of light penetrating oil on the pivot of secateurs and loppers keeps them smooth and stops rust creeping in.
• Look after wooden handles. Sand lightly if the grain has lifted, then rub in a coat of boiled linseed oil. It feeds the wood and stops it splitting over winter.
• Hang everything up. A rail with hooks along one wall keeps tools off the floor, visible and dry.

Drain water and protect what frost will wreck

Water left sitting in pipes and hoses is the single biggest cause of expensive spring surprises. Coil hoses loosely, drain them fully and hang them over a nail or loop them into a breathable sack — never leave them kinked or heaped on cold concrete, where trapped water will split them.

Empty watering cans and store them upside down. Blow out irrigation lines and drip systems, and bring in pumps, timers and pressure washers to a frost-free spot. Lag outdoor taps with a foam cover or an old towel and a plastic bag tied securely. If you have a water butt, drain it to around half full: a full butt can crack when the water freezes solid.

Liquid fertilisers, paints, wood stains and any garden chemicals should go into a lidded crate on a shelf, well above floor level. Check that bottles are sealed and labels are still legible — if a label has perished, take the container to your local household waste site rather than guessing.

Pots, trays, canes and netting

Terracotta hates frost and will flake or crack if left out, so bring it indoors or into a frost-free corner. Plastic pots are hardier but still worth sorting: stack them by size, with a sheet of newspaper between each stack to stop them wedging together too tightly.

Seed trays and modules stack neatly in bundles tied with string. Bundle canes by length and stand them upright in an old bucket or a length of drainpipe in the corner, so they cannot fall and spear someone in the dark. Roll netting and fleece around a cardboard tube, secure with string and hang it from a rafter hook. It will unroll flat in spring instead of into a knotted mess.

Label boxes so spring starts easily

Matching, lidded boxes are the difference between a calm shed and a jumble. Group things by job rather than by type, so each box is a complete kit for a task: Sowing, Pricking out and potting on, Support and tying in, Feeding and pest control, Seed potatoes and bulbs.

Write the label on the short end of the box as well as the lid, in thick marker, so you can read it without lifting anything down. Keep seeds in a sealed tin with a couple of silica gel sachets in a cool, dry place, and jot a quick inventory in a small notebook kept on a shelf hook. A five-minute note in November saves half an hour of rummaging in April.

Make the shed welcoming for winter

A shed you enjoy entering is a shed you will keep tidy. Fit a hook by the door for a torch and a spare pair of gloves, and keep a small stool or upturned crate to sit on. Store anything edible — bird seed, bulbs, potatoes — in metal bins with tight lids, as mice make short work of cardboard and plastic sacks.

On dry days, prop the door open for an hour to let air move through, which keeps damp and mould at bay. Finally, set a basket or crate at the front of the shed with the things you will want first in spring: seed trays, labels, a pencil, your sharpened hand tools. Come February, you will open the door to a tidy space, reach straight for what you need, and get growing.