Passionate Perseverance: just put it in the garage...

We have lived in our little 1100 square foot Cape Cod home for eleven years. Since space is at a premium, I have had to be very creative about storage over the years. Courtney's medical equipment is not small by any means and there needs to be a place for it all to be when it's not in use. We also have many, many books so storing them has always been a challenge. Then there is my sewing machine and fabric stash and of course my cookbooks.

Last year I realized that the time had come to take a hard look at how we were utilizing this space especially as Courtney's needs have changed and a hospital bed was now required as well as a different wheelchair. If I was going to reorganize one room, I was going to go through them all. It has been quite the undertaking.

As I have gone through each and every room in our home over the past seven months clearing things out, I have been amazed at how much stuff one can fit into 1100 square feet. After spending one weekend a month going through each room, deep cleaning, de-cluttering and re- organizing, I have been in awe of how much room you actually have to work with when things are all neatly organized and everything is in it's place.

The second to the last "room" on the list was the garage. I was dreading this. It was what my husband calls a "marriage building exercise". Over the last seven months when I came across something that I didn't know what to do with I would tell Jerry or Jman "Just put it in the garage." Well, you can only imagine what the garage looked like when we began yesterday. Something like this:

No, Jonathan's room never quite looked that bad, but pretty darn close. No we are not hoarders, just extremely disorganized people who had to deal with piles of stuff. Ugh, this is so embarrassing...ahhhh...here's another one just in case you aren't shocked enough...

So, we had our work cut out for us. The first step was to remove EVERYTHING from the garage. We had sectioned off the yard into three sections: trash, give away and put back. This first stage took about two hours. We almost felt like Christmas as we made discovery after discovery-"So THAT's where that went!" and "WOW, I didn't know we had one of those." It was hot and sweaty work. Once it was done the boys took off to the dump with the first two loads of trash such as leftover wood from eleven years of home improvement projects, paint, and broken things. I attacked the floor with gusto and when they returned we used some of the wood we kept for shelving.

Six hours later we were finally done. I was sweaty and stinky. My legs and back were killing me. I swear even my toes were aching but I was more in love with my hubby by the end of the day because of all the hard work he had done. Service is his love language and boy did he serve!

I never thought a garage could look so purdy *sigh*. Now I can walk out to my freezer without wondering what sort of creature may come at me from a nondescript pile of junk. I have informed the two men living with me that if they so much as breath wrong in this space there will be death and destruction of monumental proportions.