Garage Spring Cleaning

It's no exaggeration when I tell you that our garage made us look like we were hoarders. We didn't even manage to get a proper "before" picture because we honestly couldn't walk inside. The front half was filled with giant flower pots for our container gardens, bags of potting soil and mulch and seed, the weed wacker, and the mower. Our "things on sticks" (i.e. rakes, shovels, thrasher, hoe, etc) were all supposed to be leaning against the right wall, but since we couldn't always get there, we mostly just threw them vaguely in the correct direction and let them land wherever. We were saving our old window sashes because "one day" they might make a cool craft activity. We still had various old paint and trim and junk the previous owner had left.

This picture is actually from after we'd already spent about an hour or two clearing the back wall. Imagine it about twice as bad, at least.

It's still far from perfect, but fast-forward two days and we can now walk in (a huge improvement!) and find what we're looking for. We'd planned to donate a lot of what we cleared out to a local non-profit building charity but unfortunately the list of things they would accept did not match the things we had to give (we had a lot of light fixtures and ceiling fans, but not necessarily in their original boxes, for example). So sadly most of the items we cleared out went to the trash can.

Even actions as minor as folding the tarps and stacking them, really improved the way it looked in there. Plus we finally cleaned out the dozens of drop clothes the previous owner left. Many were such thin sheets that the paint seeped immediately through them and onto the floor, making them totally useless. So we saved some as rags and ditched the rest.

Going through the paint was a much-need update too. It had been stacked against the back wall of the garage since we bought the place. There are still a few cans we need to open and evaluate (for example - they still have our dining room/kitchen paint! So if it hasn't dried out I want to pour it into a jar and save it, inside the house, for some touch-ups) but we were able to get rid of most of it. It took them a few days to dry (some of the cans were almost full) but they finally solidified so we could toss them.

(Notice anything else about the driveway??? The piles of mulch and compost are gone! We've been very busy.)

We have bigger plans for the garage, like possibly removing one of the shelves and installing some kind of hanging system for our rakes and shovels. We still have more shelves to clear out, too. And some random hardware like hooks, nails, and screws that can now come inside to be closer to the tools. But at least everything is off the floor and grouped together.