I spent Sunday cleaning the garage. It is my secret shame. Adrian opened the garage door up so I wouldn't overheat, and I was so embarrassed as neighbors drove by, haha. Several slowed down like maybe they thought it was a yard sale or maybe they just wanted reassurance that THEIR garage isn't really that bad? It got to the point I was ready to tell the next person to slow down and gawk to either move along and pull over, get out, and help me.
I worked my ass off for about 5 or 6 hours. We had gone to WM earlier that day to pick up a few storage containers and a couple shelving units and to get the oil changed. I should have started much earlier in the day, but the urge didn't hit me until around noon or later. Haha.
Previously, I had a little path cleared out to do laundry. The garage was really wall-to-wall boxes and miscellaneous. The W&D are just a few feet to the right of the door coming from the house, but I had to make a journey into the depths of the garage in a horse shoe shape to get to the W&D. Sucky.
I got a lot of things out of the moving boxes and onto shelves and in storage containers and threw away a lot of papers. I tend to keep everything, especially things the kids have made. Or really anything the kids have ever touched or used in some way, haha. I have probably the equivalent of 72+ gallons of "keepsakes"...clothing, newspapers, drawing, toys, etc, etc, that I have in storage boxes. I also managed to sort through two 18 gallon containers worth of school and office supplies. Had I realized what all we had, I might not have had to buy as much for school. I did use items left over from last year that were in good shape, but wow, there was so much more out there in the garage.
Adrian also has a couple footlockers full of "keepsakes"...things we sent to him during deployment. Letters, pictures, drawings from the kids, etc.
Of course there's outgrown clothes, Christmas tree, Christmas decorations, an end table, baby gear, books, household decor, and on and on out there too. I really need to do a garage sale. I just have such a hard time parting with stuff. I might use it later, or I have a sentimental attachment to it.
In Hawaii we had an outdoor storage closet, a garage, a deep storage closet in the garage, a laundry room with built in storage shelves, a deep closet on the first floor, ample closets in the bedrooms, and a small-room sized closet upstairs. When we were looking for a house, LifeHappens and her husband encouraged us to consider storage space before purchasing a home. We looked at one house, what the boys called "the caveman house" that had been renovated and was absolutely beautiful. New appliances, hardwood floors and new carpet, fresh paint, just beautiful. It had an awkward living area off of the kitchen with little in the ways of walls or structure and then a converted garage with stone walls all the way around and a stone fireplace. The boys really liked the caveman house and were very disappointed we didn't buy it.
It had NO storage. No storage. We would have had to buy a second house to store all our crap, LOL.
Instead we have this house with more storage than the caveman house but less than our duplex in Hawaii. I don't want a bunch of crap inside the house if I can help it, so the garage is my hiding spot for all the junk.
I remember reading somewhere how silly it was that we keep all our cheap junk in the garage but park our vehicles, worth tens of thousands of dollars, outside. HA!
After all the work I did Sunday, it came to a point where Adrian wanted me to wrap it up. I was like, "I can't just quit. I'm not done yet." He laughed and commented that it just looked like I had moved things from one place to another. He further commented that I probably still had about 30 hours of work left. This pissed me off because I worked SO hard, sweating all the while, and I could SEE my progress. I had gotten rid of the need for a lot of moving boxes, things were organized and easier to access, and I had thrown away a lot of paper and junk. I bagged up outgrown clothes so it would take up less space.
I grumbled, "Don't touch me. I'm going to divorce you and get a new husband." He then informed me that a new husband would probably want me to clean the garage too.
It reminded me of the episode of the Simpsons where Homer and Marge are dead and in heaven, and Marge tells Homer, "Joke's on you...the garage made it to heaven, too"...and there it is, dirty and full of junk, with angel wings, waiting for him to clean it. Ha. D'oh!
The primary benefit of my toil is that I can access the W&D directly. That improves my mood a lot. I hated carrying laundry through that maze. I have to do about 2 loads of laundry most days (I don't do jack on Saturdays usually, haha), so streamlining that process is a big bonus for me.
I still have a lot of work to do on the garage, and I will finish it...maybe this weekend. Adrian has a 4 day and he plans to paint and do other honey-do's, so come Tuesday hopefully we will both be feeling like we had a productive weekend.
I would like to eventually have a garage that doesn't cause me stress...and one that I can open the door to without feeling humiliated.
BTW, I orginally intended to write about something completely different and yet, here it is, an entire article about the garage. Am I cool or what?