Once More Into the Breech

So I have been looking forward to cleaning out the garage as much as a person possibly can look forward to cleaning out a dirty, cram-packed, giant spider infested garage on a hot summer day. It turned out to be sort of fun for the whole family; the boys played with the various forgotten belongings that turned up in the jetsam of our stuffed-to-the-rafters belongings while we shoveled, sorted and sifted.

It was even sorta enjoyable, in a we-don't-get-out-much kind of way, and took a lot less time than we thought it would. And now (insert celestial angel singing here) the miraculous has come to pass: our garage is clean, and reasonably organized. You can even *park cars in it*!

The only down side to the whole thing is that we ended up with a lot less stuff to give away than I had imagined.

Aside from the obvious refuse -- moldy pieces of sheetrock, flood-damaged/mouse eaten cardboard boxes, unusuable bits of scrap wood -- we emerged from our newly ship-shape garage with only a scant handful of potential jetsam. Aside from coolerhenge, which was rebuilt in a corner of the garage with *three additional coolers* that turned up, for a total of 13 cooler (we're having a birthday party for Cole later this month; I'm thinking coolers as party favors for all the guests to take home with them!) we have a small decorative table and a box of gardening pots and baskets. That's it. It turns out our craplock was not so much too much crap as the sheer disorganization of said crap. (That, and several months' worth of recycling that we drove to the county facility. Amazing how much space six months' worth of untouched New York Times takes up. not to mention six months' worth of very much touched booze bottles) .

Anyway, once all the junk in the garage was sorted, stacked and organized, all of a sudden it wasn't junk anymore. It was stuff we use and need. I'm still sort of stunned.