We’re doing it.

We’re actually cleaning out the garage.

The garage has been the bane of my existence for a while. It’s an amazing one, with room for 2 cars and even a workshop/bench in the back. There’s endless space for stuff.

We have lots of stuff. There’s boat stuff. Boat parts. (Want a propane stove with oven? An anchor or two? How about a 15 hp dinghy motor? Or perhaps an old fuel tank. Maybe a water tank. Ooooh! How about a 10 hp single cylinder diesel engine?) There are tools and boxes and spare canvas and an old windsurfer and exercise gear. Boxes of books I packed maybe 5 years ago (or more) when I thought we might be moving to the water.

There is so much stuff that Jeremy built a fabulous shelf system along 3 walls. Big and beefy and solid wood, this system gave us 5 shelves going all the way up to the ceiling, each maybe 12 feet long. Let’s see. That’s 180 linear feet of shelving, if my math is right.

That’s also a lot of “no need to sort this stuff out and throw anything away” space.

When we were in Vermont a couple of weeks ago, we started talking about how little storage space there is in the garage. Part of that is the massive oil tanks for the furnace that take up one wall; part of that is the huge amount of dry firewood stacked along the back. “We need shelves up here,” said Jeremy. (One of the summer projects is to get the oil tanks and the furnace removed; another is to recommission the fireplace to use up that wood!)

“Are we leaving the garage shelves in the Virginia house when we sell it?” I asked.

OMG no.

So as soon as we got home from Vermont, we started organizing and sorting and throwing out stuff that’s on the shelves. If you consider that we have 3 massive projects going on (Virginia house, Vermont house, and Calypso), every time we make progress on the shelves in the Virginia garage it feels like we’re making progress on all three of our biggies.

1. Virginia house needs to be cleaned out before we sell it.

2. Vermont house needs shelving, plus we have tools and parts in Virginia that can be used in Vermont.

3. Boat parts need to be sorted, some pitched and some reordered. Some are no longer useful (the entire box of belts for that engine, for example); all need to be looked at.

Some progress photos. They’re not the easiest to tell, but we can definitely see the difference!

(PS. The wood in the back of the van? It’s destined for my colleague at work, who is thrilled to be getting decent wood for his projects. We are thrilled to be getting it to a good home!)