Such high hopes when I identified garage cleaning as a 2019 to-do nearly at the top of my list. One of the first, most satisfying things about becoming a homeowner was that I could finally liberate all the things I’d kept in storage for so long–now I had my own storage unit and could take my sweet ass time unpacking and sorting my stuff into my new home.
Except that I reached a stuck point where there were still too many boxes down there and not great places to put them inside the house, and I’d pretty much condensed down to the most sentimental layer–stuff I’ll not be purging anytime soon, thank you very much. But there’s no place for it in the house. And it’s in my way to organize the rest of the garage like I’d prefer. Ugh.
It is after 9:30 at night. I just walked in the door from a 12 hour day at work and an annoying commute home thanks to BART mechanical failures, the smell of homelessness so pungent it drove me straight into the next car, and construction that made it hard to find my connecting bus and rerouted it unexpectedly in ways that made my tired brain second guess whether I’d boarded the right bus. I’m sitting on the couch shoveling cold pasta into my face like a ravenous beast, and still committed to my 19 for 2019 process.
I just went down to my garage–and you know what? Not a damn thing has really changed; minor improvements, minor backslides. And how many fucks do I give? Zero. Really, that’s right–I have zero fucks to give that I didn’t really work on this one this year. This is the first stop in the list that gives me the opportunity to practice self compassion and take my inaction as just as interesting and learningful as if I now had a Martha Stewart-approved work space with Marie Kondo-level organization. It shows me where my time and energy has gone this year, whether by choice or circumstance, and I’ll just sit with that and be ok.
And I’ll roll it over to next year’s list–other items on these lists will eventually require it. Perhaps I can lean into my resistance for defining specific goals and break this monster into easier-to-chew pieces, like:
- Condense and contain unpurgables and stow them on shelves.
- Contain your yarn stash.
There’s so many more I could add here, and let’s also be realistic–these are probably the two most important to moving all the others. Now that I’m officially a yarn crafter (that post is coming soon), I’ve done my thrift store savvy family proud and ballooned my very own stash that, as I feared, is not organized or neatly contained. Thanks to the persistence of my loving and supportive husband, the metal shelving has at least been assembled, if not effectivvely utilized, so that’s something. Beginning tomorrow, I’ll cover the first of a few items in the list that turn out to be related, and will depend on me continuing to chisel away at that garage until both Martha Stewart and Marie Kondo would be proud. Until then, it’s late, and I have to work tomorrow. Good Night.
It Starts With Quiche 