Back to My Garage...

Have you ever seen so much stuff in your life? There is the white wicker stand I got at the Sal val that I intend to spray paint hot pink. The bikes to the left are an assortment...Nicole's old outgrown bike that I hope will bring in $5 at a yard sale, my circa college days overhauled Peugeot that Howie bought me when my bike got stolen in college and I now can't part with. It is my triathlon bike. And his triathlon bike... The snowboards belong to Matt. So that was one of the before photos, now for the after photo...please be impressed. After Teresa and I worked about four (at least) hours in the hot, hot, hot weather and I came home after Nicole's cheer leading debut, Howie's comments revolved around not being able to find the gas canister with gas in it, and questioned why on earth the gas grill was in the back, didn't I think we were going to grill anymore this summer? Apparently I hadn't thought out completely enough where to put certain things, never mind you could actually get in without twisting an ankle or worse...so I moved the gas grill and invited him to cook tomorrow evening, and immediately knew where the gas canister was.

One more before photo below revealing that probably everything except the kitchen sink had found a home in my garage...Oh, there's the gas grill before we put it back in...we took absolutely everything out and started over from scratch. Don't worry, you'll get before (and after) photos of the basement and toy room (Nicole's orphanage, she has many, many babies...) when those areas are tackled.

Believe it or not, we managed it all in just over four hours. There were a few odds and ends and sorting and storing the yard sale stuff that I did later in the afternoon, but many hands (or at least more than two) make light work.

If your garage needs help, find a buddy and go for it, it wasn't that bad.

Well, if remodeling wasn't enough for me yesterday, I tackled the garage today, but not alone! Misery loves company and my faithful friend and cleaning helper Teresa came and kept me on task, and today's task was the garage. That will pare down to two the number of remaining spaces in my house that are totally out of control. One of them is now the entire walk out basement as all the toys have overflowed out of the toy room. Why do I have such a bargain and salvation army addiction? The other is the computer a.k.a junk room upstairs.

As for the garage, there were a few reasons we tackled it first...

• If I didn't get it cleaned out someone could have died trying to get to our door.
  
• I had a bad feeling there was a dead rodent somewhere (there was...)
  
• Restrictions and Covenants in our neighborhood bar us from having campers in our driveway, and we have had a camper in our driveway about three weeks now...It has temporary NC plates (expired, at that) so it can't go very far until it is transferred to my name, but it had to be moved out of the driveway before neighbors called the police.
  
• Howie was missing two bathing suits and I knew that they had to be there somewhere.


• The chest freezer is gone, and that was huge.

And that's just for starters...

So now everything has its zone...the camper is in, Matt's stuff is on one shelf, yard sale stuff is in the corner, and the pets even have their niche. Shoes are organized (for now) and the recycling bins are all neat in a row.

How long do you think we can manage to keep it this way and not become the catch all?