Day 10: Daunted
Posted: August 17th, 2010 | Author: Dariane | Filed under: Daily Updates | 15 Comments »At the end of each day, I post a recap of what happened and what progress I made. I try to be as detailed as possible when tracking the project.
I opened the door to the garage today for the first time in approximately seven years. Although I vaguely remembered what the garage looked like, I was no where near prepared for what I saw.
Today’s Stats:
Number of hours spent: 8
Supplies purchased: None
Amount spent: $0
Number of (13-gallon kitchen) bags trashed: 2
Number of giveaway boxes: 3
Progress:
First thing this morning, for some strange reason I started working on some high shelves in the laundry room. Every single item on the highest shelf is boxed and unopened. 80% of them are Christmas items. All of them were either intended to be given as Christmas gifts or were received as a Christmas gift and left unopened for regifting. It’s been at least three years since these items have been touched.
I basically just put these items into giveaway boxes and brought them to the storage unit.
Then I opened the door to the garage. Here’s a rough drawing of what my garage looks like:
And here’s what I actually saw when I opened the door:
I walked around to the outside and opened the garage door. Here’s how it looks from the outside:
This is the part where I go, “What in the world did I get myself into?”
What I observed about the garage:
- Because it is the largest area or room of the entire house, it has the most stuff overall to sort through.
- However, the percentage of stuff per square foot is actually far less than some of the other rooms in the house.
- Looking through some papers in a box closest to the door to the garage, the most recent dated object I found so far was a paper marked January 2003. So…
- Normally, if we haven’t used any of this stuff in over the past year chances are that we won’t use them in the following year. If that’s the case, all of the stuff should be thrown out or given. But…
- I also need to go through the stuff for important documents, old photos to keep, and other items on the guidelines my family gave me on stuff to keep. I’ll write about these guidelines and my criteria for keeping in a later post.
- Most of the stuff in the garage is more or less grouped together to be donated or given away. This is because when we tried to clean our house before all of our donation bags & boxes went to the garage then never left.
- Although most of the stuff is “sorted,” some of the bags and boxes have either deteriorated, broken, or are simply stacked in an unstable and fragile way.
All of these factors will make cleaning out the garage easy from a time & effort standpoint yet mentally and emotionally challenging.
Upon seeing the garage I immediately felt overwhelmed and almost discouraged. Where do I even begin? How do I organize all of this stuff? Why do we have so many packages of toilet paper? I took some time away from the garage to brainstorm and map out a plan of action. My initial thought-burst resulted in three possible ways to get through the stuff.
- Work it like a clock. Start at the door to the garage, divide it into imaginary sections that are each 25% of the garage, them sort my way clockwise by section. Or I could go counter-clockwise.
- Work it like a printer. Start at the garage door, then sort through stuff horizontally. The pattern of motion I’m thinking of is like a printer, a line at Six Flags, or a TSA line at the airport.
- Work it Buddhism-style. Create a pathway from the door to the garage, down the middle and out the garage door. A middle path, if you will. This would make trips from inside the house out to the storage unit so much easier. Then I could sort by:
- Spreading the path outwards or
- Spreading the path one side at a time
I knew if I just got started without having a plan, I’d probably go nuts and often feel overwhelmed. After a while of just envisioning the possible methods, I decided to use NONE of the possibilities listed above, at least not yet. Instead, I’m going to make a path from the door to the garage to the right corner where our broken water heater is then continue along the right side of the garage to the garage door. I marked it in blue below:
This still creates an easier way from the house to the storage unit, but it also creates a path to the back yard. Hopefully this will encourage my parents to fix our broken water heater sooner rather than later. I mean, cold showers is fine when its 100+ degrees (F) outside because some of the heat gets to the pipes. But in the 40-50 degree winters? Not so much.
This plan is all I’ve got so far. I’m still deciding if I want to “printer it” going left or if I want to “clock it” counter-clockwise. I’ll just figure that out when I’m done with the pathway. One thing at a time.
It was noon by the time I actually got to work on the garage. The temperature outside was already 90+ degrees (F) making my work really unbearable. I had to stop every 30 minutes or so to take off my mask and gloves and sit to drink some water. I was completely spent after only a couple hours; I totally passed out and spent 45 minutes taking one of those naps that feels like you slept an entire evening.
Sadly my visible progress was minimal and I have no “after” photos to show you today. Tomorrow? I hope so.
In retrospect, what the heck was I thinking working on the laundry area first? I should have started the garage in the morning when it was cooler, then work on the laundry area inside the house where there’s AC later in the day. Ah well. Live and learn.
Extra Stuff:
My dad came home at one point today with a package he received. Yay. More stuff. After he set it down, he went to refrigerator at ate the last of the strawberries we had. Then he rinsed out the plastic container it was in, held it up, and wondered aloud, “Hm, what can I use this container for?” He paused, then put the container on the dining table for saving.
I don’t know what to do about that one.
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I’m totally in awe of what you’re aiming at here. It really is exciting to me to see your updates, and I’m wishing you the best of luck.
Your father and the berry basket are a prime example of a piece of decluttering wisdom I ran into ages ago. “Clutter is a decision deferred.” I can’t say that it has been super-helpful in managing my clutter, but occasionally I can look at something and think “Wait – what decision am I putting off?” and then decide and move the stuff on. Sometimes. It definitely helps me to remember that deciding where to put something and putting away things that have established homes are two separate tasks and combining them frustrates me. I have to keep those tasks separate.
Good luck, and keep your chin up. What you’re doing is hard, and I totally admire you for it.
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Dariane Reply:
August 19th, 2010 at 9:44 am
Thanks R.M.! I wish I knew how to teach that lesson to my dad. *sigh*
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Printer method looks cool in image files, but it also looks like a lot of unnecessary movement back and forth. Pathway is a good idea though.
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Wouldn’t doing “pathway” and then working one side or the other involve just as much back-and-forth? I think it only looks unnecessary until you realize she has to cover that area somehow.
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I vote for a Nautilus shell. They’ll never see it coming!
Ideally, you would do back-and-forth from the garage door side. Then you could just haul stuff directly outside, without having to go through the house.
Maybe you could do this early in the morning when none of the neighbors are around? Or maybe with a large tarp so you could just step outside without revealing the clutter?
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Dariane Reply:
August 19th, 2010 at 9:47 am
These are great suggestions.
I’m not too worried about what the neighbors think though; they already see the storage unit parked on our driveway so they’ve already assumed that we’re cleaning our garage. Maybe I’ll just have the garage door wide open for ventilation.
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>>Then he rinsed out the plastic container it was in, held it up, and wondered aloud, “Hm, what can I use this container for?” He paused, then put the container on the dining table for saving.<<
This is a very good sign that your dad is going to need some cognitive therapy to keep from re-cluttering the place once you're done.
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Dariane Reply:
August 19th, 2010 at 9:47 am
Amen sprezzatura. Amen.
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Actually, my first thought upon seeing the garage was “That isn’t so bad”. Based on what the rest of the house looked like I thought it would be absolutely crammed with stuff. But easy for me to say, not needing to clean it out in 90 degree heat.
I am all about reusing stuff for good purposes. But your dad actually thinks he will use a *plastic strawberry container* for something? Just recycle it, sheesh!
If he really thinks he needs one later, just go buy more strawberries… they aren’t precious commodities!
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Dariane Reply:
August 19th, 2010 at 9:49 am
The garage really isn’t THAT bad compared to other areas of the house for sure. But when you’ve got all of that stuff in front of you to sort, it can sure be daunting.
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sprezzatura, I’ve been having the same thought! I’ve actually been worrying about Dariane a little bit, even though I don’t know her, thinking that she’s going to get the house all clean and then her family’s going to clutter it up again. Or it’s going to be a one step forward-one step back deal as she cleans but they continue to clutter.
Dariane … I know you’ve talked to your family about your own guidelines for what to keep/what to throw out. But do they have guidelines about keeping the clutter under control going forward?
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Dariane Reply:
August 19th, 2010 at 10:02 am
Here’s an excerpt from “The Purge” post:
“I don’t know whether or not someone in my family can be clinically defined as a hoarder or a compulsive shopper. Maybe they are. All I know for sure is that my house is messy, and I’m going to do what I can. If someone in my family is indeed a hoarder or compulsive shopper then I’m prepared for the likelihood that once I finish this project the house will become messy all over again. But when I finish the project my hope is that we will at least know that even the most overwhelming and frustrating circumstances can be overcome.”
My family understands that the clutter is a problem, but it has been so overwhelming that they’d lost sight of any possibility of it being clean ever again. Thankfully they’ve seen the work I’ve done and are more hopeful now to live in a clean house once again.
As far as guidelines about purchasing and keeping habits for the future, when I speak with my family regularly throughout the day, I try to figure what it is that they truly value. Not only what kinds of objects they value, but more about what they value with their time and what they aspire to live and be in the future. When values are the focus, it’s clearer to see that everything else is clutter. (I got this from Peter Walsh’s book “It’s All Too Much.”)
With each day, I try to help my family think differently about what they decide to let become a part of their lives. I’m slowly chipping away at the old mentality that caused the clutter to begin with and engraining a new one to prevent it from happening in the future. It’s inception! :p
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Oh — I hadn’t yet read Day 11 before I posted above. That’s hopeful. I’m glad.
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[...] the storage unit and now I’m back to thinking about the best method to clear out the garage (clock, printer, or other). Thankfully I have the weekend to decide and next week I can begin the real war with the [...]