Spring Cleaning

It's that time of year again when thoughts turn to: I have got to clear out all this mess!

For the last couple of weeks we've been hitting the house, out buildings, and workshop like maniacs, cleaning, clearing, and tossing anything that is useless. (I am still here.)

When we toss something out, it truly is rubbish. We tend to reuse and recycle stuff until it's no longer usable.  

There's probably another couple of weeks of sorting before we're done.

I started with the garage, only because we were expecting bad weather in a few days and decided we wanted to protect the second car in case of hail. What better place than a two car garage? Only, there wasn't space since I'd been dumping all the things I wanted to put out in a garage sale.

I'd been wanting to have this garage sale for three years now, but we were either too busy or the weather wasn't ideal. This year is it. I want to get rid of this stuff. 

We tried to donate it a couple of years ago, but since we live in the boonies, none of the charities wanted to come out here, and I'm not going to break my back just to give them something free. If it doesn't sell, it goes on the curb with an ad on Nextdoor to come get this stuff.

Once I cleaned the garage and found a temporary spot for garage sale stuff, it was on to my garden shed. It's a pretty large shed and I hadn't cleaned it out in many years. It was time.

Meanwhile Greg was off to tackle his workshop--a Herculean task on the best of days. As of this writing, he's still at it. 

I'm a very methodical cleaner. For the garden shed, I took everything out from one side. I would've taken all of it out, but again, that bad weather was coming, and I don't trust weather people. If something happened and I couldn't get it done in one day, I could risk getting half my stuff soaked.

It was logical to do it one half at a time. It turned out it was such a big job, I could only manage half anyway. I had to chuck an old metal shelving unit that had rusted away and replace it with two plastic sets of shelving that were taking up valuable space somewhere else. The best part about these shelving units is that they were both free. I was just waiting for a reason to put them to good use. My shed was perfect for them.

The garden shed does double duty, serving both gardening and animals needs, such as feed, fencing, and supplies. I finally chucked a hundred old, crumpled plastic garden pots that I was never going to use.  There are lots of other pots I'll be giving away at the garage sale. These pots are too nice and heavy to toss, but not nice enough for me to keep since I have more than enough.

Aside from three desiccated field mice and some hatched snake eggs, it was more a matter of sweeping out the dust and wiping everything down.

Greg had a much bigger job, which is why it's taken him weeks. He has a humongous shop. When he had it built, I never thought he'd fill it, but it's packed to the brim. He knows there's too much clutter, but he doesn't want to admit it because then he'd be forced to admit his wife was right all along.

He's a natural hoarder, and the shop is one place I can't touch, hence, the mess. 

But he's making headway. He's organized all his plumbing, electrical and auto supplies. Now he's working on nuts, bolts, and screws. 

What I'd really like him to get rid of are his two motorcycles and a half dozen crates of auto parts--for cars he hasn't owned in 40 years! 

I've been trying to get him to sell his bikes for over ten years. Now they're next to worthless. What was the point? Someone please explain husbands to me.

If we could move those things out, he'd have a lot more space. It would look like a real workshop again, with actual aisles.

As it is, I can't stay in his shop very long. Every time I trip over something I say a lot of bad words, and mumble something about Greg's heritage.

With luck, 2026 will be the year of a fresh start with neat outbuildings and a deficit of mice and snakes. 

How do you handle spring cleaning? Are you living with someone who hangs on to every little thing? We should start a support group.

 

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