Garage Band

This band of garage cleaners totally rock!! Buck arrived home from his overnighter with a nasty migraine. We were at church, but returned home to try to be quiet :) We decided getting a start on the garage move to the shed would be a good use of our time. The very first task--sweep up the carpet staples, dog food, dirt, and bugs covering the cement floor. What we were about to accomplish required sitting space for the sorting people, and sliding space for the tubs.

You can see how packed the garage currently is (was) . . . it doesn't normally look quite this bad, but it's been the catch-all throughout this process. Normally, the van would be in there taking up that empty space, but it was out baking in the sun to give us room :)

To give you an idea of the task--every single one of those tubs on the shelf, every single one of those tubs on the floor had to be gone through . . . again . . . In the evening, Buck and I went through files. We have stuff from clear back when the kids were born--receipts, bank books, insurance paperwork. After HOURS of sorting (and discovering tons of fun things that we'll keep holding on to--cards, poems, pictures, mementos), we have a burn box of paperwork more than a foot high! The whole house is starting to feel lighter . . . ahhhhhh!!

This guy, of course, needed to find other ways to amuse himself :)

All of this . . . all of this is SCHOOL!!! Oh my goodness, loads and loads of school! Easily a third of everything in the garage . . . possibly more than the seasonal clothing storage . . . and pretty close to the "tubs of memories" storage (unless this number includes the *tubs of children's toys that I'm not ready to give up yet, so bring your babies and small children so I have a reason to keep keeping my kids' baby toys* :). We did some major cleaning out! Of all of those things (even the toys and books, for real). And, I eliminated all the cardboard storage from school; I even cleaned out a diaper box we've been using for storage--it's been a LOOOONG time since we had anybody in diapers. Our trash can was overflowing . . . it was emptied this morning and full again by noon! That does not bode well for the week of "normal" trash that we'll be trying to stuff in there til next Monday :/

My big idea of the day was to give each of the kids a tub of their very own. So far, I've just been mixing all their schoolwork together as I have space. This method worked really well, because they went through everything. They tossed art work that they aren't that jazzed about anymore (trust me, there's tons, they won't miss it!), old workbooks, notebooks filled with scribbles, and eventually filled or partially filled their very own tubs with school binders and keepsakes. All of this was organized in the garage for removal to the barn on the hill. It took us all day just to go through and organize! Buck and I were still working on it at almost midnight and then again today . . .

Buck tried hauling tubs up the hill in a variety of ways. He even went somewhere to get the wheel on his dolly (dollie?) fixed, so that contraption could be of use. But in the end, with his back starting to hurt again, we loaded old Bessie and drove her up the hill (multiple times :) The kids were very entertained to see their parents off-roading up the mini mountain of our yard. I'll admit, it actually was kind of fun ;) Now the barn is filled . . . but not to bursting! There's still room to move around in there, and Buck plans to add some organizational items he brought up from the garage (like garden implement racks, etc.). It was a hot, exhausting task (and one tick had to be removed from Brennen's leg), but we worked our tails off and got it done!!

This was another effort to clear out the garage . . . the closet doors are back on the hinges! We took them off when the kids were younger because they were unnecessary. As much as the kids were in and out of the closets, it just made sense to leave them open. It also made their rooms feel bigger, especially the girls' with that giant bed. You had to shimmy around the stairs with one closet door open and the other closed, work your way into the gap, open the other door to access whatever it was you braved the journey for in the first place, and then reverse the process to get out again!

Now the only shimmying necessary, is in and out of my poor finger's bandaid. I full on squished it trying to pop those doors back on :/

One of the bonuses of going through garage stuff . . . we find all these things we've saved for "someday." Well, someday is here! Gabby got three pairs of my CA jeans and Caelan snagged a dress I wore in college (pretty much all my clothes have gone to the girls in the past six months). The boys became the proud owners of my geode and a piece of petrified wood my mom gave me (G$'s eyes got huge when he saw these additions to his collection, especially after he got a whole sack of polished rocks from his dad's bonsai tree set-up, which are actually the only things left from that set-up :) But BY FAR, the best discovery of the day . . . this old Star Wars light sabre battle toy. They played it for HOURS, I'm not even kidding! HOURS yesterday and today they put batteries in it, lol! They didn't even know it made sounds and flashed lights. So, it got plenty more play time today :)

So, here's a peek at the work we accomplished! The fridge, freezer, and tools are relocated. All the tubs on the left are Christmas items that USED to be stored in my laundry room. The tubs on the right are things we thought might melt in a 110 degree shed. We still have a few more things to shift around before we can set up the home gym, but this was a HUGE accomplishment for the day!

BUT . . . my absolute light bulb moment, and the idea I am BY FAR the most excited about for today . . . involves the piggies. Graysen built Oreo and Nutterbutter this nice new cardboard house (because they are getting huge and couldn't fit in the paper pigloo he made before). I decided to go a step further . . .

Can you see the piggies' new home?!! With all that Christmas gear cleared out, I was able to open an entire shelf in the laundry room. That shelf happens to fit the guinea pig enclosure perfectly! Here's why this is so exciting to me . . . 1. We have the floor space back; for months either the hedgehog or the pigs have claimed the space next to the sink clear out onto the stripes of the carpet. This isn't a huge room, but it was a huge cage to maneuver around for hand washing, laundry, etc. Look at that open floor space now! 2. They are very skittish creatures, so their sudden movements when someone walks into the room also makes the person walking into the room very skittish :) 3. They somehow manage to get fodder EVERYWHERE--sometimes from kicking it out when they're *running from danger* or dropping it when the kids get them out to hold 100x a day (poor hedgehog), or from cage cleanings, etc. (there are a lot of etc.'s in this story :) The challenge is . . . my vacuum could practically suck the tile off the floor, so that poor rug right there is getting eaten alive, sucked into the roller, and starting to get thread runs . . . because I vacuum this space about 5x per day. No joke. I'm hoping that with the piggies over on the shelf, we'll all be much happier. Hooray for that stroke of brilliance!! :)

Well, that about sums it up. This afternoon Buck hung pictures for me in the hallway, and after some touch-up paint in the bedroom, finished putting up pictures in there too. He tells me tomorrow he's going to try to finish our bathroom project. However, I think we may need a day off. It's his last day off of this crazy cool, long stretch, so we should probably find something fun to do that doesn't involve hurt backs and bleeding fingers, bruises and ticks, I mean those things are all fun and all, but . . . ;) We'll see what tomorrow brings!