Clean out my garage

???

. . . but, gotta kill the mice inhabiting the garage first.

And then, because they ALWAYS come back (or so I hear)I will get rid of the stuff they’ve already done the mousie dance on, and save what I can, and repack in the plastic bins so that micey teeth can’t chew anything else. (They love the cardboard boxes I’m currently using.)

I only bought FIVE bins, so that I will just plain HAVE to get rid of stuff. The bins will therefore protect my stuff from rodents AND make me downsize the clutter, killing two birds with one stone.

Too bad I can’t kill two mice with one trap :p

I told my roommate we have to make this an appointment set in STONE for this coming Saturday.

Because we have mice.

And when you go into the garage, you can see their little droppings, and hear them scurrying, and you can smell their disgusting mouse pee.

I found a box of my precious, precious books that I have been MEANING to unpack and put on my book shelf that they decided to nest in. More than half were fine, but a few were chewed up to make a nest and a few more had been pottied on. So I had to throw out almost twenty paperbacks tonight.

*Sob

So this week I’m gonna buy some of those large, Rubbermaid, plastic storage containers that close with a SEAL.

And this weekend we are going to drag EVERYTHING out into the driveway. We are going to throw out what is ruined. We are going to select what we MUST keep, to fit into the containers. We are going to give to Goodwill what will not fit in the containers, if it isn’t ruined.

And then we will stack the plastic bins back in the garage neatly against the wall, sweep the droppings up carefully, lysol the whole thing so it won’t smell, put out even MORE traps than we have out now, AND put out some poison.

My roommate warned me they’ll stink when they die. I told her I don’t care. They just plain need to die. The stink of their decaying little bodies will eventually fade, but if they continue to live and poop and pee on everything, that stench will remain in our garage forever.

The little suckers went for my books. That was asking for war.

Managed to go through six boxes of stuff/junk/crap today. I threw out four bags of trash, have a box full of stuff to donate to my roommate’s church’s yard sale, and got the various leftovers back into two much more neatly packed boxes with lids and labels. I’m on a role, and the only reason I’m stopping for now is:

I’ve actually filled our entire trash can I’ve found so much stuff to get rid of this week. Trash pick up is at 8am tomorrow, and then I’ll be able to start filling it up again.

I am SUCH a huge packrat with sentimental (mental) feelings regarding everything material that only my closest friends and family would truly understand how impressive it is that I have found stuff to trash and donate . . .

I have these boxes of random stuff I’ve been carting around since college. I’m about halfway through going through those boxes to throw out some stuff, and I already have two boxes for the Kidney Foundation to come and pick up. What is left, and I plan to get it down to at least a third of what I had, I will repack much more neatly in closed boxes so mice or roaches or whatever can’t get in as easily, then label, and then stack more neatly.

I am about halfway finished. I have about a third left of the original junk to go through – and then I just have to restack. Maybe I’ll even put in some shelves to make things look neat. . .