The Great Garage Clean Up/Out!

On the first two days of the Engineer's week off, we tackled our disastrous garage. I wish I had thought to take a before photo when everything was still in the garage, but you will still get the general idea of how messy it was. Stuff, stuff, and more stuff!

Yes, we own three vehicles. If it's any consolation for our excess, that little car is going to be twenty years old next month and has well over 300,000 km's on it. It's not worth a dime. The white van isn't worth much either, so when we bought the Monster, we decided to keep the Freestar for fear the car would conk out as soon as we got rid of the Freestar. These days the Freestar is starting to act up too. I'm not liking that because I drive it a lot.

We have mice, so Rubbermaids are a must for anything that is rodent chewable!

Soccer gear and lots of it! Seven years worth of it actually. Squirt started playing when she was three. Her wee little shoes were so adorable! They're long gone now, but we still have lots of other pairs in various sizes. Since the girls only wear them for a short season (school soccer) and they all seem to continue growing, we hang on to them until the youngest has outgrown them. Bub however, was more than happy to say goodbye to his. Running is not his thing, so soccer ranks very low on the scale of sports to be played. This same rule applies to skates in the get rid of department.

The grade schoolers had a PD Day on Monday, so we set them to work too. Squirt washed the years of dust and grime off some of the items that we were no longer keeping.

Our garage is big enough for three cars, but there are only two doors. Yes, we do park two vehicles and a utility trailer in the garage year round. It's one good way to only let the junk stuff collect for so long.

The Engineer at his worktable. It probably took the longest to get cleaned up and off, but it looks fantastic now. He can even use it as the worktable it is meant to be.




All nice and clean! The wood chipper, lawn mower, and rototiller can be moved for the rare occasion that he has time to do some work at the bench.

My reachable overhead storage that the Engineer put together. There is a huge loft above, but climbing the rickety ladder (seen in an above photo somewhere) kinda scares me. Now we can easily grab stuff as the seasons change and so far in the fifteen years we've lived out here the mice have never bothered with anything in the Rubbermaids, so we're hoping that they'll be anti-Rubbermaid for years to come.

Rubber boot storage. Found this idea on Pinterest (of course) and it works great! The art work above the boots is many years old. Bub needed a trophy case, I guess. I wonder what he won them all for?

These boxes hold various kids' toys. They were the toys boxes my dad made for my brother and I when we were little. There was a bench that they slid under, but the bench, even though it is actually still sitting in the garage has seen better days. Just to the left of the boxes is a milk box that holds our plethora of skipping ropes. They were originally meant to hang, but there are a couple children who just can't get the hang of that (pun intended :o)).

In the end there was a lot of junk flung!

To the road:

One fan motor (for/from our old central air unit that was replaced when we put on the addition in 2010-11). -- Someone picked it up that evening.
One gas powered weed wacker -- It lasted less than an hour at the road before someone claimed it.
One sewing machine in its table (Confession: I picked it up off the road about two years ago, full of grand intentions that didn't happen, so back to the road it went.)
Multiple bags of garbage.

To the thrift store:

5 large bags of clothing (Not from the garage, but from a couple weekends of going through the kids' clothing in our annual change of seasons what can we get rid of days.)
1 almost full garbage bag of assorted footwear.
2 pairs of cross country skiis
1 box of various glass vases
1 big bag of Christmas lights

It's such a wonderful feeling to pare things down. I wonder what we'll get rid of if the Engineer can take another week off? :o)