Spring cleaning starts in the garage
Interesting fact: One out of four garages in America is so cluttered it won’t even fit one car.
This discovery, from a 2015 consumer survey by a maker of garage organizing systems, rings true. Drive through any post-1960s neighborhood in Chattanooga, and you’ll see tons of cars parked in driveways due to overstuffed garages.
Although it has always been my hope to use our family’s two-car garage for its intended purpose — housing cars — we, too, recently succumbed to the insidious scourge of clutter creep.
One-half of our garage, yes 50 percent, had become swallowed by stuff. The tipping point happened around Christmastime when we reconfigured our 10-yearold son’s bedroom and got rid of his old bed and some furniture. The twin mattress, box springs and bed frame had made their way to the garage, earmarked for charity. But time and energy never aligned to make the trip to the Goodwill truck happen.
Meantime, once one lane of the garage became effectively shut down, all of us suddenly felt at liberty to pile on. Thus the “closed” half of the garage soon became the home of an empty flat-panel TV box, an old bicycle with flat tires, a disassembled cardboard crate, several 12-packs
of Gatorade and assorted family junk.
As if part of some sort of garage conspiracy, the door to the jammed lane mysteriously stopped working, making cleaning up the clutter seem futile.
I could feel the urge to surrender setting in when I took a deep breath and decided last Saturday to start a reclamation project. Ten minutes into the effort, my 10-year-old son appeared in the door and said, “Need help?”
Bless his heart, the boy is a worker. If he senses a project is about to happen, he is all in.
“Make you a deal,” I postulated. “If we can park two cars in this garage by the end of the day, there’s $20 in it for you.”
His eyes widened and he immediately dove into a pile of cardboard, cutting big pieces into little pieces with a box cutter to place in the recycling bin. His motor runs constantly, but the cash incentive was a form of turbocharging.
We exchanged a highfive after managing to wedge the mattress, box springs and bed frame into our Toyota Venza — although we later took it out to give to a friend. I took much of the cardboard to our neighborhood recycling center; where, before I could even get back into the car, another patron had snagged our TV box to take home. “One man’s trash …” I thought to myself.
“Are we are making progress?” I asked the boy about two hours into the project.
“Yep,” our 10-year-old agreed.
By then, we were down to odds and ends that we stuck into cracks and crevices of shoe holders, boxes and shelves lining the perimeter of the garage.
Suddenly — with a fully operational door — we had a glimmer of hope of actually reclaiming the lost half of the garage for a car.
The previous owners of our house had installed pegboard along the walls, so some of the bigger stuff — lawn mower accessories, yard tools and the like — we hung from hooks.
I spent a few minutes futzing with the malfunctioning garage door and realized it was a simple matter of flipping a switch to re-engage the chain drive. Suddenly — with a fully operational door — we had a glimmer of hope of actually reclaiming the lost half of the garage for a car.
I could feel my mood lifting.
Once the floor itself was cleared, I got down to sweeping up leaves and dirt. I beat the door mats on the chain link fencing in the backyard, raising a cloud of dust.
About three hours into the project, the work was essentially done. The garage was as clean as it has been in years. As a cool-down, I washed both of the cars and went to the ATM to get the boy his $20.
With both cars gleaming and parked neatly in the garage, I stood on the top steps leading inside and admired our handiwork. It never ceases to amaze me how decluttering clears the mind.
If I ever retire, I think I will become addicted to cleaning, perhaps walking around with a whisk broom holstered to my hip and dust rag in my back pocket.
Anyway, that’s my Pledge.
Pun intended. Contact Mark Kennedy at mkennedy@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6645.