It’s a garage! They’re not supposed to be clean
How clean is your garage? That’s assuming you have a garage, of course. If you’re lucky – or smart – you might not have one and in that case you can simply read this and make fun of your family and friends who do have one of the hated things.
Here’s another question: how clean is a garage supposed to be? Sure, we see photos of spotless, near-empty garages in Architectural Digest but just how close to reality is that for most of us?
The average garage for the average family (whatever your definition of average may be) probably has at least some of these items:
• Gardening tools
• Old paint (a few cans still good but most dried up long ago)
• Rope
• Snow toys left over from a weekend in the snow 12 years ago
• Tools (how many depend on how handy the user pictures him or herself); many get unused
• Rags
• Jumper cables (you never know)
• Oil
• A few old car parts
• A bicycle or two
• Cases of water, soda and/or beer
Nope, there’s more
Beyond those things, a good number of garages have:
• Skis
• Skateboards
• Barbecue equipment
• Hibachis
• More tools
• More paint
• Something flammable
• Dusty boxes of tax, income and expense records
• Boxes of other papers too important to throw away but forgotten about years ago anyway
• New(er) beach umbrella
• Old(er) beach umbrella
• Sand toys
• Equipment from basketball, softball, baseball, tennis, soccer, golf, bowling, or any other sport someone at sometime in the family indulged in
And even more
And finally, I imagine that at least a few garages have:
• A partially dismantled car
• A partially dismantled off road vehicle
• A partially dismantled boat
• A jet ski or two or three (any one of which may also be dismantled)
• A hang glider
• An old trophy or two from childhood
• Items tossed out when you redecorated but liked too much to throw away (even though you admitted that it might just be time to let the disco ball go)
Now for my big mess
My suppository – sorry, I meant repository – of the rarely used, often unneeded, and generally forgotten items include:
Some of the above plus
• Dog leashes
• Old fish aquarium
• Old fish aquarium equipment including heater, pump, gravel, plastic plants, stones, miniature skin div-er to aerate the tank, and more – so much more
• Old plastic kid’s pool
• Toys for the old plastic kid’s pool
• Equipment for the new plastic kids pool
• Twenty feet of floor to ceiling shelving to hold even more stuff such as the 30 year old reel-to-reel tape recorder someone gave me that needs to be repaired so when I get it repaired I can use to listen to old tapes of me when I was on radio (on the very remote chance I still even have the things)
• Boxes of old (as opposed to at least somewhat newer) books although I have tossed some of those away. After all, why keep a history book that stops before the entire western hemisphere was discov-ered?
• Three tons of dust
Finally in most garages there might, might, be room for a car or two. But have you noticed how often people let a car that cost them tens of thousands of dollars set out in the sun and rain while they put the stuff worth a whole lot less inside? It doesn’t make sense of course, but hey, we’re people – we don’t have to make sense.
Stop looking and start
cleaning
Back to the point of all this: I’ve been thinking about cleaning the garage but you can’t just rush into it. Certain steps and methods are required:
The means to a clean
• See a need (1-2 months)
• Recognize the need (2-3 weeks)
• Accept that the need must be satisfied (10 days)
• Begin planning stages (1 month)
• Start plans (1 month)
• Arrange necessary tools and or equipment – including but not limited to garbage bags (1 week)
• Get motivated (2-3 days)
• Get motivated (2-3 days)
• Really get motivated (4 days)
• Start work (uh oh, rain – see Weather Channel)
• Start work (whoops soccer game – check schedule)
• Start work
So you can see that should I start immediately, there’s no way to finish before the first of next year – even using best case scenario numbers (and we know that never happens). So like I said, I’m going to put-ter (it’s a thing dads do) just as soon as I head to the garage and find a soda and/or beer. It’s not too early to start is it?
Another point: cleaning a garage would need to be done by somebody who originally was at rest. Now you’ve got to wonder who at rest and in their right mind would actually get up to clean the garage? Therefore, cleaning the garage willfully and wholeheartedly would seem to fall under the category of an ‘unbalanced force’. So cleaning the garage is for unbalanced people. Done. Guilt gone. Sigh. All is right with the world. Glad I could help.
Still Amazed 