Cleaning out the Garage

Cleaning out the Garage, in Burbank CA
So it was time to clean out our garage. I couldn’t just tell my husband that I wanted to clean out the garage and expect him to do it that very weekend. Nope….my husband needs more time to let that kind of thing sink in. You see…he likes to “collect” things and put them in the garage under a tarp or in a corner for that day or time when he might need ‘it’. Parting with an ‘it’ can be a little traumatic so I try to let him get mentally prepared for the activity. How I do this is by putting a list of ‘Honey-Do’s” up right on the cabinet in front of his coffee maker so that he has to see it every day. I make sure the top priority is something easy so he can complete that one task quickly and have the satisfaction of crossing it off the list..…You see, my intention is to create momentum! As the weekend for our garage cleaning comes closer and closer I make sure to let him know how many days we have left before we start. This way he can go into the garage and pull out anything that is a complete deal breaker for him, something that he needs and doesn’t want to toss. It is all very civilized.
The day finally arrives and we embark on our task with gloves, water and trash bags. What we find is really amazing…..and example: We have 3 turkey fryers, one happens to be a friend of ours that lent it to us for Thanksgiving last year. It was covered nicely and kept in the corner so that we could return it, as we have done for the past few years. Apparently he didn’t miss it either and after calling him and letting him know we had it, he said he thought it was in his garage. This made me think that maybe my garage cleaning story was relevant to others. If we had his turkey fryer, BUT he thought HE had his turkey fryer then his garage may not be in that great of shape either….so I started looking at the garages of my friends and family.
Wow is about all I can say. I saw garages with small pathways (you know who you are) to the back, garages piled high with Christmas decorations – (that is another blog….for another time) and garages that were so neat and clean I thought no one really lived in that house.
What I realized about this whole experiment is that whatever your garage looks like and how you keep your garage is OK as long as you can use it. No one cares if you can or cannot park your car in the garage but it doesn’t make sense to go buy a 3rd turkey fryer because you cannot find the other two…now does it? Organizing the garage into sections is what helped us and has made our garage more useful, plus we can park one car in there now! And guess who’s car that ended up being?
As always Santoro and Sons Real Estate Group is here to help you and your family navigate the complex Real Estate market. Call us and let us know about your garage story!