clean out the garage

Today my mom came by and took Isak to the park, so Markus and I started in on the battle of the junk. We dragged everything out again & sorted sorted sorted.

We had a big deconstructed shelving unit that was taking up space rather than being used, so while everything was in the yard, Markus put it together & it works wonderfully in there.

We had a big pile of stuff to get rid of (at least a couple of car loads for donation), and suddenly it started to shrink on it’s own.

The next door neighbour thought we were having a yard sale, and ended up taking about half the stuff: a big wooden table, computer gear, styrofoam heads, dishes, cork-board, Xmas stuff, a little greenhouse box, tools & supplies, etc. A lot. This saved us a whole trip (AND in passing conversation I found out he has some tools I need that he’ll lend me so I’m REALLY happy about him coming by).

My mom also spotted a few things (including some of my brother’s camping gear which she offered to drop off), so she left with that, some gardening items, and the laminator.

It’s still not finished by a long shot, but there’s one big pile waiting to go to the dump, one to be recycled, and still another for the next clothing swap (which my friend called about today). Markus is dropping off the donations and I’m finally relaxing.

I feel good. We got a massive chunk of this done. You can actually walk to the back of the room and find things now.

One of our big decluttering plans for the summer was to tackle the garage/storage room (which had gotten bad again), but because of things that happened this summer and the CUPE strike (no garbage or recycling pick-up for the last 3 months and counting), it didn’t get done.

Today it was clear outside, so out came all the crap. We sorted hoards of things, re-boxed a lot, sorted a load of stuff for donation or disposal (Markus was going to drive to an out of district dump, but they close early in October), made a pile of clothes for a swap, washed the big fun-saucer to give away, and started crushing & stacking the vast amount of cardboard boxes we had clogging up space.

We kept a few of the good ones for organizing and donation, but Markus has filled the car with the rest and headed off to the recycling drop-off on the other side of town. This included piles of paper & cardboard that has been building up during the strike.

Markus also dropped off the huge computer monitor I’ve been wanting to give a friend for months, we just couldn’t reach where it was (at the back of the storage area) until now. Another big dent in the clutter and nice since she needed one.

Pretty boring, perhaps, and there’s more to be done, but it made a huge difference. There was previously wall to wall mess reaching up to the ceiling. If it’s nice tomorrow we may jump in again.

The final garage nasties have been cleaned out. I’d rather not even talk about it (eww).

Another vague organization session & quick trip to the bottle depo is in eventual order, but I’m checking this off.

I’m finally washing my hands of this. And I’m washing them twice.

We moved everything out onto the lawn & tried to sort, de-clutter, clean, and organize as best we could. A whole bunch of stuff got dumped or went to Value Village, and piles of boxes are ready to go back to their proper homes (see “return other people’s stuff”).
A very large box is ready for the dump – full of junk and rat poop.

It’s by no means all done, but this was the hard part. Hooo-ray!!

Today was the first day of Spring! So to celebrate, we decided to finally face the absolute horror that is our storage area. Not only is this the space where we throw all the various crap we’ve collected, but a family of rodents with decidedly unclean habits moved in briefly after a friend left a bag of dry dog food there. The little buggers consumed, recycled & re-distributed it everywhere – NOT PRETTY. We’ve been putting this off forever & today was the brave, brave time to face the grossness.