I do this a lot. I just don't do it this extensively. I normally just make it so that I can walk inside of the shed. This time . . . it was different.
I dragged enough stuff out onto my driveway to the point I had to think about how I would get my car out of the opposing garage and pick up my kids in five hours. I almost thought I should park it in one of the parking spots up top. But I made room. By moving a lot of storage bins throughout the day to various positions on the driveway.
Granted, I have a lot of stuff. And a lot of stuff in my shed. A good majority of my doll collection is now stuck in there, which accounts for most of the square footage of the squattage. And there are bins of holiday decorations. Easter, Halloween and Thanksgiving. Christmas got so big it had to move to the rafters of the garage. Maybe you're getting my drift now.
The main thing I used to store in this shed was my children's clothing. Things I had bought far in advance, whether on sale or at a garage sale, and separated by size and season. But now . . . I'm not going to get upset . . . I'm down to one bin for each kid. Oh how I worried this day would come.
And I'm even trying to get rid of those bins.
I have bins of decorative items I've collected over the years, mostly at garage sales, that I just can't seem to part with. Bins of my kids old toys, vintage toys, character toys, wooden toys, is there an obsession here? Did I not have enough toys as a child? Clearly, I did. But somehow I think that ancient Pinocchio lunchbox is going to solve all of my financial problems someday. (I did look it up, it is worth about $100. Not exactly financial problem solving, but you add enough of those together . . . )
Then I also house entertaining stuff in there as well. Boxes of wine glasses, margarita glasses, candles, dishes, etc. Sure, I keep a lot of this in the house, this is just the extra. For the BIG parties. Let's just hope the economy turns around and I have one of those again. But those boxes of 12 wineglasses for $9.99 I bought so long ago at Target have served me well. And then I even uncovered 4 more boxes of champagne glasses. This is when I start talking to myself when I'm out there, opening the boxes, realizing what's been sitting there all this time. I begin to think either I really need some help or I really need to have another party.
And then there are a lot of small pieces of furniture, some beach umbrellas, beach chairs. I also kept about a hundred shoe boxes which are now in the slice-up-with-a-razor-blade-and-recycle pile. Just looking at that mountain of cardboard explains a good deal about why I often found it difficult to even enter the shed. Then there are empty boxes for all of my dolls and figurines that are still allowed in the house (cuz you always learn that it's worth a lot more if you have the box). Anyway, you're getting my drift now, aren't you.
Mind you, my husband would love to put tools, motorcycles and bicylces in this shed. What a waste, I say. That's what the plastic shed under the deck is for. And the basement. Come on.
So anyway, back to hauling all that stuff out. I did that for five hours, went through a lot of it, reorganized it, made labels for the bins, put a lot back in on the shelving. Picked up the kids from school. Only had a few hours left. Had to consolidate and put back in the shed anything I didn't want to get ruined overnight by dew until I could get back to it. Which wasn't for another 2 days.
So I take my kids to school that third day after I initially started, all ready to get back out there and tackle the crap machine that left remnants all over my driveway. I'm envisioning a nice hot cup of coffee, turning my reggae playlist on my ipod and blasting it from the garage as I go about my business on a sunny Friday. Things cannot go that smoothly. I don't know why, but it's me, so they can't.
I come back from dropping the kids off and there are two guys with a jackhammer at the top of my driveway. As I pull up, I roll down my window.
"Hi"
"Hi"
"What are you doing?"
"We're with Comcast and we're running a new line for your neighbor."
Which involves digging up my property and eventually part of my driveway. Why does this not seem right to me?
Especially when a huge truck shows up and parks under the big oak at the top of the drive. And they keep the engine running. Pretty much all day. And it's loud. But so can I make my reggae music.
So this is how it's going to be. My lovely, relaxed, coffee & reggae shed clean-out now sounds like a construction site. Unbelievable.
But I persevere. I continue to separate and combine, box, label and shelve. I do this all day until the Comcast guy, who's not really a Comcast guy but a subcontractor for Comcast, comes to tell me of the little "problem" they've run into.
How did I know this was going to happen?
They need to dig up the top of my driveway, meaning the blacktop/concrete/asphalt because their little missile thing hit something and has to be redirected. I thought he was going to say it hit my water line or something like that. No, thank goodness. All they have to do is put a big hole in my driveway and then patch it up. Great.
"Who do you work for again?" Just so I know who I'm going to call if this gets really screwed up.
Finally, it's time for me to shower and pick up the kids. Because I know that once I pick up the kids, not much productivity is going to happen. Plus the fact that I'm so incredibly tired by that time that my energy and enthusiasm levels drop considerably once I allow myself the short break of retrieving children from school. And it's Friday for Pete's sake.
Saturday morning we all get up and go to garage sales ("Garage Sale Weekend Recap #2") Which I find kind of funny and ironic since I'm trying to clean out stuff - why go to garage sales to find more stuff? But that's just the thing. These clean-outs really give me a reality check. So I only buy stuff I don't want to be cleaning out the next time this wave of "I MUST clean out the shed" comes over me.
And when we came home, I was back to cutting up boxes and organizing my piles. Pile of trash, pile of recycling, pile of Goodwill Donations, pile of Consignment Store, pile of Still-Needs-To-Go-Back-In-The-Shed-Somehow. And then I had to get my son to his baseball game. That was the end of that day.
Sunday I had all day to finish up. And for the most part, I did. But not without also reorganizing the garage and my son's room in the process. I ended up with a bunch of empty bins, which is really the only sign of progress I could clearly see. And the garage was a lot cleaner. And my son saw toys he never knew he had. And the shed . . . well, I can walk in it now. Mission Accomplished.
~Miss Bargain Huntress.com
