Tackling the garage
Some progress has been made, but a deadline looms...
I've lived in this house for almost 16 years now, which is longer than I've lived anywhere in my entire life, by about 13 years. (By the time I was 18 years old, I had moved 18 times. I know my way around a moving box.) Which means! I'm experiencing new things, like what it's like to have 16 years' worth of accumulation in the garage.
The garage has, of course, become a dumping ground. Our house is quite modestly sized, which I love. I've lived in houses much larger than this one, and too much room brings its own problems. But it means that space is at a premium in the living area, and stuff gets shoved into the garage. The garage is actually fairly large, it's roughly a quarter of the square footage of the house. Which does not help us! It's a black hole for crap! There have been attempts at organization. (Oh, the shelving! So full of hope when empty! So full of random objects in reality!) But it's mainly been a mix of very, very old moving boxes, overlaid by strata of awkwardly balanced life cruft.
But we have always been able to park the car in the garage. Gotta cling to the wins where you have them.
When we bought this house, the previous owners took the refrigerator with them, so we had to buy a new one. There are built-in kitchen cupboards above the refrigerator spot, and none of the "nicer" models would fit. We were forced to settle for a very mediocre, slightly-too-small fridge. I feel affection for it, it's pleasant to use. But its freezer is far too small. Someday we'll knock out those cupboards and get a better refrigerator, but for now...
I want a stand-alone freezer. And that has to go in the garage.
I've had a freezer picked out for more than a year: a 14 square foot, upright, self-defrosting GE. I've long daydreamed about the fun we'd have together: I could start my Christmas baking in November! I could have four different kinds of bread at once! I could splurge on one of those big boxes of amazing frozen fish straight from Alaska!
I kept telling myself that the freezer would be my reward for cleaning out the garage. There were a few spurts of effort, dents were made... and the tides of life came through and refilled all the pockets of progress with new crap.
It was time for a new approach. The one you reach for when you know your own shortcomings, accept yourself, love yourself as you are, for all your foibles.
I ordered the freezer, to give myself a deadline.
Not only is there no room for this freezer, there is not even a path to bring it through the garage to the place I think it should go.
It's due to arrive in eight days.
In the midst of all this, we had an awkward adventure when a strange, sweet burning smell started happening in the garage. At first, I thought it was some kind of leak in the car, which we had fixed. (They did find some leaks, our car is old, so it was a good thing!) But then the smell returned, much stronger, like a sweet forest fire right in my nose.
There was no smoke at all, only a smell. My main thought was some sort of electrical problem, but I couldn't pinpoint where it was coming from. We were alarmed enough to ask the fire department if they could come check it out, to be safe. They sent three fire trucks, sirens blaring. sigh. Among the horde of fully-suited firefighters, there was just one guy who had handheld devices to look for gas leaks and to scan for possible fires inside walls. I wish they would have sent that guy over in a pickup or something. They didn't find anything, and by the time they arrived all of the odor had dissipated from having the garage door wide open. They shrugged and went back to the station. (I was grateful for their help ruling out the scariest scenarios!)
It turned out it was the old fluorescent overhead lights in the garage. I'd been meaning to replace them, they were all in rough shape. The basement lights were flickery and dim, like a horror movie, for years, but it was one of those things that was never the priority. I think I felt like the creepy lights fit the mood of the space.
We found a good electrician, replaced the fluorescents with LEDs, and now we can see in the garage again!
All of these things: cleaning the garage, fixing the lights, buying a freezer... they feel like the sort of things we should have an easier time being on top of. This is basic life maintenance. But there is so much weight to carry these days, and it makes this kind of baseline functioning hard. There are other life things that have to be higher on the priority list. God, the amount of wrangling Rich has to do with health insurance alone feels like a whole job.
With the bright new garage lights shining like hope, yesterday we pushed past the overwhelm, and started picking away at the crust of stuff. I went through four old boxes, and I only kept about 10% of what was in each one. A few years ago, I would have wanted to keep maybe half. The objects that we didn't need to keep handy had finally had the graciousness to turn into things we didn't need, at all.
But the keepers included some gems! I found three old photos of my childhood cats, which Wanda had heard tales about but never seen. We found a few books worth keeping. I found a couple hand fans that will work better than the ones I'd been using. I found a glass skull that Wanda immediately wanted.
I also came across this old Coleman kerosene lantern, left behind by one of the previous owners of the house. I don't have the time to research it, but a quick search says it's worth anywhere from $40 to $400, so I guess I'll hang on to it.
Together, Rich and I managed to get rid of around ten boxes worth of stuff, plus a bunch of old electronics! I've made some real progress on clearing the spot where I want the freezer to go. There's still no way to get the freezer to the spot, but we've identified a bunch of old furniture we're ready to say goodbye to: a beautiful old storage bench I don't have room for, a simple desk, and a couple of odd rattan pieces.
The real excitement is the feeling of possibility. The garage has been a solid Wall of Daunt, for at least a decade. The tantalizing idea that we may be able to reclaim some of the corners of our life....
The terrifying horror show of cruelty and destruction that is happening on the national/global level is another Wall of Daunt, one that is much harder to tackle. But I sure like this feeling of possibility.