Cluttered Garage

A few years back, my wife decided she would like to keep her car in our two-car garage over the winters.  She cleared enough room on the left half to store her car.  It remains drivable with only a small need to move a few things to the opposite side each fall.  The perimeter and right half of the garage have Stuff.  Lotsa Stuff.  Some of it is very useful.  There is a ladder that will get me to the upper roof of our house, though I think I'm past the age where that can be done safely.  I used the wooden step ladder to change a bulb in the garage.  Over the years I stored my briefcases and attaché cases there.  I harvested them this spring and relocated them upstairs, finding in the process one of my fondest purchases, a leather attorney's briefcase rarely used but still with two pens in its pen holder.  It now sits next to my desk, likely to remain unused, mostly obsolete but probably with enough interior space to hold a laptop and charger.  

Over decades I bought stuff that I thought I would use.  A large whiteboard for my office, never installed, but not taking up that much space when stored vertically.  My barbecues are mostly unrestorable.  Lawnmowers are all broken except the push reel mower that takes little room on a rack.  My many bicycles have sentimental value, particularly the blue 24" Schwinn 3-speed that my grandfather bought me for my 11th birthday.  I had it restored a number of years ago.  It still rides.  The kid's bikes and my 26" 10-speed racer with the curved handlebars are better donated, though they take up little room at the perimeter of the garage.  I once bought a bicycle carrier that installs in the trunk, on the remote chance that I might like to ride in a park.  It's still in its original box.  My Schwinn will fit in the car's back seat where it seems more secure than hooked to an external car rack.

So start with the easy decluttering, maybe.  Cardboard boxes far in excess of what I can use.  Break them down, put them outside for the next recycling collection. Not as easy as it looked.  Have to get to them by moving or stepping over other things.  Many have stuff in them, from foam packing peanuts, to foam inserts that held the original contents stationary.  And big boxes have little boxes inside with no floor space added until the big box gets recycled.

I have paint cans that go with hazardous waste.  Have no idea where the many tires would find their final home.  Children's furniture. Children's books.  Athletic equipment that will never be used again.  Residual curtain rods, external shutters, trash bins from companies that no longer pick up our trash.  Nothing is really that easy to clear.

Across the street sits a king-size dumpster, the final one after two previous ones have been filled, then carted away.  Our neighbor, who I really never got to know, expired at age 95, having been widowed for ten years.  His worldly goods filled dumpsters, with the onus of clearing all that stuff falling to his surviving children.  My garage project is much less than that.  I really don't want it to default that way.