Tuesday, June 10, 2008

The clean garage…

As I’ve stated before, I’m not really good at the whole sit down and relax thing. I like to be busy and when I’m not busy, I like to putter. I used to enjoy going out to the garage after dinner, turning on some music, opening a beer and puttering.

The problem is, that the over the past year with the kitchen remodel, the backyard renovation, two kids moving out and just general busy-ness, the garage has gone from my sanctuary, to the fourth circle of hell.

Thankfully, my eldest daughter and my wife gave me an early Father’s day gift this past weekend. They cleaned my garage. Now for many of you, that’s really not a big deal, but then again, you’ve never seen my garage.
My garage is approximately 20’ x 20’ and is supposed to be a two car garage. In reality, I’m lucky if I can put my motorcycle and all my bikes in there at one time.
Evidently, I have too much STUFF.

Well, in an effort to avoid moving to a bigger place with more room for my stuff, I decided it was time to clean my garage.
And we did, top to bottom, side to side. We filled the garbage can, a couple of bags and half my truck with trash. The other half of my truck is full of “stuff” I have to drop off at goodwill this afternoon.
The funny thing is that almost everything that is going to goodwill, is something that we bought at one time or another and felt we just had to have. It’s weird how time changes stuff from the latest and greatest and must-haves to crap in the garage that you need to get rid of so you can have your space back.

In addition to the fact that now all my tools are actually where they belong, and I can get to my bikes when I need to, the garage is actually a place I can go to relax and tinker, or putter or just hide out.
Of course, now I have to deal with the issue of where we put everything since I know when we put it away, it was someplace I’d be sure to find it……speaking of which, where did I put that bottle opener?

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