Tackling the Garage

First of all, thank you to Christina for finding me the How-To Make Mario Bricks website. BoingBoing had pictures today, but I am very excited to know that MY BLOG SCOOPED BOINGBOING! You are getting a reward, but I'm not telling you what it is, yet. Surprises are more fun.

I cleaned out the garage yesterday. I went out to find the box that had my extra wedding pictures in it, but it wasn't exactly easy to find. So, I decided not to bother with it, and I took a walk instead. When I got back from my walk, I thought to myself, "Today is that day off with nice weather that I promised I would use to re-organize the garage," and instead of succumbing to my habitual procrastinative tendencies, I dug a dusty, "No time like the present," mindset out of a disused mind-cupboard and set to work.

A bit of background: My husband and I are currently living with my in-laws. We moved here from a 2-bedroom apartment that was over-crowded with stuff as it was, and made space where we could in my in-laws' already-fully-furnished house. Most of that space ended up being in the garage. It was mid-December when we moved, and we drove through several snowstorms on the way here, so we mostly used the "stack it in the middle of the garage and deal with it later" method of unpacking. And actually, everything was stacked pretty nicely when we first put it in the garage. But three and a half months of "Oh, I forgot to unpack the [insert forgotten item]" and digging through the nicely stacked piles to find the [insert forgotten item] had reduced the garage to an unapproachable mess.

So I dug out the portable stereo (thankfully, it was near the top of the pile), put on some Indigo Girls, and started dragging everything out of the garage. I made piles all over the driveway - Books I can live without over there, books I want to bring into the house over here, kitchen stuff over there, kitchen stuff that needs to be properly re-packed because I have been digging through the boxes over here. I also set aside all of the bags of clothes so that I can switch out our summer wardrobes, and dug up the box that contained my extra wedding pictures to make a little desk album for Jeremy's desk at work.

I listened to three CDs with a few songs repeated (The Indigo Girls were followed by The Cranberries and The Barenaked Ladies, for the curious), so I guess I was working at my project for a little over three hours. I restacked all of the boxes in a nice, stable row along the length of one side of the garage, making sure to keep the boxes I might want to get into at some point near the door. You can now actually walk all the way from the door to the driveway when the lawnmower is out, which is quite an accomplishment.

Of course, I still have all of those boxes and bags of clothes that I brought into the house to sort and deal with, but I had to work today, so I haven't had the chance yet. I did manage to put together a desk album for Jeremy from my box of double prints, and he actually remembered to bring it in to work with him today. And really, that was my original purpose in cleaning out the garage, so by completing that part of the project, I can actually say that I finished what I started! I'll get to the summer clothes in good time. It was cold out today, anyhow, so summer clothes can wait. Apparently, there was even SNOW before I woke up! (Here's a picture that a friend of mine who keeps more normal work hours than I do took this morning, if you're interested.)