Operation Clean Garage: Complete

Yesterday my partner had one goal; to clean out the garage. And yesterday he did, with a little help from me.

It amazes me how the gradual accumulation of stuff can increase the amount of crap a space can physically hold. I’m speaking of our garage, which whenever we have a project anything leftover from said project usually gets placed in the garage, usually unceremoniously and usually including the garbage associated with the project as well. Why? Uh… we’ll get to it later?

The thing about most homes’s garages is that they are the rare location in a home that most consider out of sight, out of mind. Due to this thought process, many of us feel that as long as we keep the rest of the house in order, a little chaos in the garage is acceptable. Of course, I’ve been to houses that would qualify for any number of television shows about hoarding, and yet they have the most immaculate, organized garages. But I know with us, it is simply not putting stuff away when we’re finished with it, especially tools. The half bath project we finished back in May? Yeah, even the box the toilet came in was still in the garage, bearing practically every tool we used for the project on top of it.

So when my partner actually went out into the garage and started the cleaning process, I let him. Oh, I helped a little, but really I didn’t have anything to add. A lot of stuff was garbage, a few things could be stored on the side of the house under the eaves, and even more stuff didn’t need to be stored on the shelving units and could simply be stacked as they were already in Rubbermaid totes, making room for other items that had been just sitting on the floor, like our tile saw and everything we used in the half bath project and all of my partner’s fishing stuff.

Is the garage better? Yes. Is it as organized as we’d like? No. However, with a much cleaner space, our next order of business in the garage is to get a treadmill from a friend who offered it to us months ago, which was the main objective during this particular operation. After that we have to go through each shelf on the two shelving units and throw out or donate anything we don’t want or need. Considering one whole unit contains just our various holiday decorations, it may be time to pare down some of that as well. Then again, some of the stuff may just need to be put back where it belongs.