Twists & Turns: Is It Time to Clean Out the Garage?

IS IT TIME TO CLEAN OUT THE GARAGE? BY JUDY CAUSEY LOVE, SOUTHEAST ALABAMA CONTRIBUTING EDITOR

YES! I definitely think, as the weather turns cooler, it is time to get in that garage and try to clean it out. I say ‘try’ because we live in the South and usually no matter what the temperature is it will be higher than your age.

Thankfully, my wonderful husband, Teddy, undertook this effort recently. He did it alone, because we have found that it is often more productive if only one person does certain ‘jobs’. Ladies, you know what I mean.

It is amazing what you can collect in a few short years using the old standard phrase, “I may need it later”. This applies to everything from empty boxes and broken tools to buckets with holes in the bottom and three-legged sawhorses.

To start the adventure, Teddy pulled the vehicles out of the garage and parked them in the driveway, leaving the tailgate down on the big truck to stack old stuff on. I can tell you ‘old stuff’ migrated from the tailgate all the way into the bed of the truck before his first hour was done.

I kept a quiet total of what I saw in the disaster area as the work proceeded. Every time I peeked out of the door, something else forgotten or unknown was unearthed but he did create a place for all things marked ‘Keep’.

Another hour passed and I supplied cold water and supportive conversation. Teddy quickly became covered in sweat as the temperature started to approach three digits.

After hour two I stayed inside and watched through the window. It was safer that way to avoid the useless items flying out along with any four-letter words.

Three hours into this I braved the heat elements and offered more water. He declined but

I was amazed at how much he had gotten done. There is only so long one can handle 100+ degree heat in a garage in the middle of the day.

There were no less than 30 empty cardboard boxes crushed to go to the recycling center, after being deemed no longer ‘good boxes’. Then I saw what looked like about 4,000 nails, screws, bolts and miscellaneous pieces of PVC in various sizes all poured into one of those ‘good boxes’.

There was a rake with no handle, a shovel with a handle but no blade. No, they didn’t fit each other. I saw rusted tools, old paint cans, and a broken ‘baby gate’ for a dog we haven’t had for 7 years.

Teddy had also unearthed parts of a vinyl fence from a house we sold 6 years ago, a broken sprinkler and a dent puller (?) he hasn’t ever needed, to my knowledge. I think it had been filed under the category of “I may need this later.”

There was a box of old locks and keys that we later decided did not match and many unidentified metal parts for unknown projects lost to the sands of time. There were even wrinkled and yellowed receipts from different home improvement stores covering about five years.

To round it all out there were a couple of damaged fishing poles, cracked or broken ladders and leaky water hoses. Whew!

By the time Teddy decided he was ready to stop on day one, a huge amount of junk had been cleaned out and marked for its next destination.

On day two, he used the old shelves with some new lumber to make bigger and newer shelves. He loaded these with separate (labeled) containers holding all the nails and screws and bolts he had put in one big box the previous day.

He also created a ‘tool wall’ that actually held working and usable items like rakes, hoes, shovels and that metal thingy we use to cut the water off at the meter.

He created a table for his electric saws and other sharp and dangerous carpentry type items, as well as his prized vise which I think had been hiding for a long time under some of the ‘might need later’ stuff.

I was amazed to see neat rows of various lengths of heavy-duty electrical cords hung orderly instead of on the floor where they lay like giant orange snakes waiting to trip someone up. When he pronounced it finished, there really wasn’t much left to do but sweep or vacuum the floor and at