I have for the whole of my life almost completely ignored, and without realizing my oversight, the most humble of residential structures, the backyard storage shed.

I feel a trifle bad about this, in part because I own one.

The plain metal box has stood at the southwest corner of my place, just below the old ash tree, which generously decorates the roof each year with seeds, for a quarter century.

I suspect I am not unusual in overlooking these utilitarian buildings.

They are, like many diminutive things, easy to miss.

(The cereal flake or scrap of potato chip that I invariably drop on the kitchen floor and then step on, crushing it into parts too small to be seen by the naked eye, to cite two especially common examples in my life.)

Most sheds take up less space than a typical bedroom, and they usually are placed in the corner of a lot.

During a recent stroll in Boise with my wife, Lisa, and our son, Max, I had something of an epiphany as regards sheds.

Even now, several days after our walk, which lasted a little more than an hour, I can’t say with any certainty why on this particular day my eyes focused, as never before, on sheds.

I suppose the season was partially responsible.

It was the first day of February. In our northern climate, gardens never look so moribund as they do during February, especially when there is no snow to grace the scene, as only snow can do, and a sullen rain is falling, as was the case during our walk.

Even a well-tended yard seems a bit dull and unkempt in mid-winter, the grass brown, the shrubs and the trees skeleton-like. The general impression, unfair though it may be, strikes me as one of neglect.

The first shed on which my eyes lingered drew my attention because it seemed to me unusually nice. It was a wooden structure with a small four-paned window. The light blue paint, and the white trim, looked freshly applied.

Our route was mainly in residential neighborhoods. As is typical in Boise, which has been among the nation’s fastest-growing metro areas over the past few decades, there was a mixture of streets with ranch homes probably built in the 1970s and 1980s, and subdivisions of more recent origins, with two-story townhouses of the sort that has infested the Treasure Valley.

As we walked I noticed, with some surprise, how common sheds are. I didn’t compile a count or anything, but it seemed that something around half the homes had some sort of structure that obviously served as the place to put lawn mowers, garden hoses, plastic chairs and the other accouterments of suburban living.

But what struck me more than their ubiquity was the variety in styles, and conditions.

I saw many sheds, like the blue one, constructed of wood.

Equally common were sheds made of thin metal sheets. This is the kind I have. I’m sure you can buy these sheds pre-assembled but I believe most, as mine was, came in a kit that includes a 50-page instruction manual that would confuse the people who put together ballistic missiles.

Also approximately 2 million screws and assorted other fasteners.

I was surprised by the popularity of plastic sheds. These are made of pieces of thick plastic rather like children’s play structures that fit together in the manner of gigantic Legos.

I have no experience in the matter but I suspect assembling a plastic shed would be simpler than a metal kit, if only because there must be fewer screws required.

Plastic also seems to me the ideal material for a structure intended to be out in the weather constantly. Plastic, unlike metal, is impervious to rust — admittedly a lesser risk in our arid climate than, say, on the Oregon Coast, where rust and moss compete for space and will begin to colonize any item that stands still for more than a few days.

Wooden sheds, of course, require the same maintenance — paint, roof shingles — that a typical home does.

An advantage of wooden sheds, as I noticed in several yards, is that they can be painted to match the home, making the shed seem less like an afterthought and more like a sort of auxiliary to the main structure.

Wooden sheds seemed to me on average to be in better shape, at least based on my cursory view from the sidewalk, than metal sheds.

Some of the latter had a few dents in their walls or roof, like a carelessly driven car. A few had a noticeable lean, and looked as though they could be toppled without a great amount of exertion.

None of the sheds I saw had open doors, so I can only speculate about what was inside.

This requires no immense leaps of deduction, of course.

As I mentioned, these structures house stuff that is mainly used outside. They are especially useful for people who, like me, don’t have a garage. I would quickly tire of having to dodge my lawn mower if I kept it in the dining room. And I appreciate not having to keep my oil drain pan and funnel in a closet.

But sheds, in common with all buildings, tend to have a powerful, almost magnetic, attraction to items. I saw several properties with sheds where things normally stored inside — lawn mowers, for instance — were outdoors.

I empathize.

My mower lives in the shed but I usually leave several other things, including snow shovels and our Christmas tree stand, outside rather than try to cram them inside the modest space.

Every year I spend an hour or so trying to pare my possessions, hauling dozens of items outside and seeking a more efficient arrangement inside.

This yields only brief, and meager, benefits.

I lack the fortitude for a thorough purging, am powerless to discard a subwoofer that weighs about as much as a 4-cylinder engine and has lurked, an unwelcome boarder, in a corner of my shed for a couple decades.

I have a motley assortment of chair cushions — quite a lot more, in fact, than I have chairs. Yet I never get around to figuring out which cushions best fit which chairs, a simple task that would carve out valuable space in the shed without sacrificing the comfort of anyone’s posterior.

I’m happy to have the shed, at any rate.

Even if it has a dent in one side where I misjudged the swing of a shovel handle, and another in the left sliding door when I yanked a trifle too hard when the track got stuck.

And the roof sometimes leaks a little despite heavy applications of duct tape.

Jayson Jacoby is the editor of the Baker City Herald. Contact him at 541-518-2088 or jjacoby@bakercityherald.com.