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DIY

That Dirty-Secret-of-a-Garage has been Tamed.

July 20, 2012
I can't believe we did it.  We cleaned and organized this mess in less than 24 hours:
Wednesday night my mom and I worked until about 10:30pm and were so excited when we quit for the night because you could see the garage floor on one side.

Yesterday, our progress went a lot faster thanks to our amazing neighbors (hi Jamie and Andrew!) who helped take all the construction debris to the dump for us and our other neighbor (thanks Kara!) who took Greta on a very lonnnngggg walk so we could focus on the mess at hand.

In fact, if we back up the camera, the above photo would look like this:

Improvement! While I helped unload the first truck load at the dump, my mom got the rest of the carpet, sheet rock and molding debris all swept up and boxed for the second dump run.

And then we just organized the rest of the boxes that need to stay put (until we are sure our basement isn't going to leak again), which left us with this around 3 pm yesterday afternoon:

A cleaned, organized garage!

That we can park in!

We did break our rule of making this a completely free project by spending a necessary $5 taking our loads to the dump, but other than that I resisted the urge to buy 20 more plastic storage bins--that was hard.  This project was just time and effort.  It feels so good to be able to walk in our garage, and find stuff in our garage and park in our garage.  Why, oh why didn't we do this sooner?

Oh yeah...because my mom was in town this week.  Her birthday week!  I bought her bedding and she cleans my whole garage--and now she is weeding our garden beds.Who is the go-getter in your family?

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  1. Wow, well done! Isn't it so cathartic to get rid of junk? I'm so impressed that you have an actual car in your garage. And good call on not rushing to get stuff back in your basement. We had a flood, got it all cleaned up and put back together, only to repeat the whole thing three weeks later. That was tough to swallow.

  2. Hip Hip Hooray! I know junk drawers don't count, but this still made me want to tackle mine. Yep I needed THIS much of a before and after clean up post to get the motivation to clean out a desk drawer!

  3. My eyes!!!!!!! How glorious!!!!! It must feel SO good having that cleaned up. And hooray for nice neighbors to take the crap for you! I was wondering how you were taking it to the dump. Ryan totally wants a truck for man duty things he says, and then a nice sedan to take to the office.....what a dreamer :-)

    My mom is definitely the go getter. When we moved to FL, she cleaned the entire place (3 bathrooms mind you) and she just wouldn't stop cleaning. I was SO grateful for her.

  4. Garage looks amazing! I am now think that maybe in my future for this weekend. Sometimes I have to ask my dad not to help out because I feel guilty or want to learn.

  5. I'm sure you are loving your nice & clean & organized garage!! What a nice mom you have!!! I love your mom's shirt!!

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