Everyone has some Room of Shame in their house, right? Like; the one place that’s virtually never clean or guest-safe, where all random oddities go to die or be forgotten. It’s that place you shove everything. It’s some quarantined off, doored area, preferably dark and out of the way.
In our apartment, it used to be the master bath. I don’t even know how that happened, honestly– I assume it’s all some long story that involves Jason bringing in a shovel or something and putting it in the master bathtub. And then the ladder went in there. And then summer toys during winter seasons. The master bath was the one place I wouldn’t let anyone even in– like, honestly, I wouldn’t even go in there unless I had to.
And now– deep breath– it’s our garage.
I’m about to let you see this atrocity. Be prepared.
Wince.
LOOK AT THIS. It’s awful. And Lord knows Mama tried:
That portion is entirely my doing. Notice how certain things are labeled, and there seems to be some sort of pattern going on. There was an attempt.
And it used to be even worse. Here’s another painful snapshot from 2008:
It stayed like that for years. YEARS. 2008 was better than 2007, which was better than 2006. Here’s a true story, guys: I have never, in the entire time we’ve lived in this house, parked our car in the garage.
Jason did try to help matters in February:
We had a huge SuperBowl party, and neither of us wanted guests to accidentally wander off the beaten path and into the squalor of the garage. So he picked up. And it was a kind-of improvement.
The problem is that Jason doesn’t really clean. He just moves and stacks. We had just as much junk, only it was in boxes with a clear walkway now.
I’ve been finally getting my life organized, and I’ve realized a huge part of staying on top of everything is having a place for everything. You can’t clean anything up if you don’t have a spot to put it. That’s really the whole issue with the garage. There was no given location for anything. So even after the shifting around of boxes, things ended up left on the garage floor again, because– well, where else could it go? Like, we knew the shovel belonged in there, but there was no shovel place. It just ended up propped up in another pile of assorted nonsense.
I’d been pushing Jason to commit to a weekend to do the garage, and he said this one a month ago. I think he thought I’d forgot. Little did he know Organized Becca and her iCal are likethis.
First things first. We had to pull everything out of the garage that wasn’t assigned a spot.
That’s our dining table covered in Things to Be Sorted, and Jason showing Elias some Nintendo gear circa 1987. There were three reasons I needed Jason’s help during the garage overhaul. Number one: he’s stronger than me and taller than me. Number two: he has opinions on everything, particularly household arrangement, and it’s easier to hear that opinion during the process than hear disapproval expressed afterward. Heh. Number three, and most important: most of this junk is his.
Although. Between all the issues of Nintendo Power and comic books and computer cables, there were things like this.
(He had saved all the notes we’d written each other while we were dating.) (Aw.)
There was also this TOTALLY ACCURATE drawing four-year-old Elias did of Jason playing XBox:
Those were definite highlights.
The rest of it was pretty tedious, though.
Sigh. Almost.
Elias made this sweet note of out twist-ties (and boredom, heh).
So, after about three hours, we had cleaned out all the boxes and filled about three bags with donations to charity. Jason and I went into the garage and surveyed the semi-emptiness. “You can put a workbench in here now!” I enthused. “Just like we talked about!”
Oh, PS. I promised him a workbench. It definitely sweetened this whole manual-labor-on-a-Saturday deal.
Jason was like YEAH WORKBENCH!, and I was like YEAH ORGANIZATION!, and so we broke to go check out garage storage sets. “Pull up Lowe’s,” I told him as he brought out the iPad. “You can have a few hundred dollars to buy whatever you want. GO CRAZY.”
Okay, in my mind, I was being super generous. Three or four hundred dollars to spend on man stuff? That’s the stuff of awesome wifehood. I was already envisioning our perfect garage. We would have parties in there. We’d lead house tours THROUGH the garage, so everyone could appreciate the arranged tools, the padded flooring, the treadmill I would inevitably buy and actually run on if I had a place to put it.
Jason interrupted my fantasies: “… This is really expensive, Becca.”
I was all, “How expensive can it be?”
OH MY GEE. THAT STUFF IS SO EXPENSIVE.
The system Jason wanted was like THREE THOUSAND DOLLARS. If we wanted to buy part of it today, we could get like a single cabinet and a tool hanging rack. That’s it.
“There have to be cheaper options,” I said, so we looked. All the cheaper stuff was rated like one star. People were complaining that the plastic cabinets broke two weeks after purchase. That wasn’t really an option, either. There’s no use throwing away money.
It kind of took the wind out of our sails, and we laid around talking about possibilities, and I have to be honest: I can’t foresee a future where I spent three thousand dollars on a garage set. Three thousand dollars is new flooring. Three thousand dollars is new cabinets in the kitchen. Three thousand dollars is a family vacation to Disney. Three thousand dollars is not storage in the coldest and darkest spot of the house.
At the end of the day, we just threw things away– reorganized– and made do with what we already had. It’s at least clean again. Really clean. Really labeled. Really easy to use. Really good enough for now.
And then we went out to Applebee’s and Best Buy to celebrate. Because there’s nothing to make you feel rich like not spending a fortune.
Wow, good to know that others have a room of shame. Sadly, ours is the garage as well. I don’t even go in there. It is my husband’s man room of shame. Although last time I saw it, yours looks pristine compared to ours. Way to go on getting it organized and being brave enough to show it.
We live in the place his deceased great-grandmother used to live and there is an entire room we cannot use. I didn’t say DID NOT use or shove stuff in therefore do not use, but ARE NOT ALLOWED TO USE by his (still living) grandmother. A WHOLE BEDROOM. Full of random stuff that CLEARLY no one wants, needs, or will EVER want or need, because NO ONE knows it is there or is ever coming to look for it.
So we just have this room that we basically pretend DOES NOT EXIST. It’s like the door is a decoration, it is always closed, I FORGET THAT ROOM exists when I give people “tours.” Seriously. True Story. And it’s an entire room that I am not even ALLOWED to organize, if I want to – a whole room that could be a study or a guest bedroom or a library or an art room. Nope.
Sorry. Minor tangent. In my mom’s house, the version of you garage is THE BASEMENT. It was never properly finished in the first place, it’s terrifying and had bad plumbing and to top that off, it’s the place we store dorm room extras, clothes we no longer wear but for some reason won’t take to Goodwill, sporting equipment we’ll never use and never DID use — it’s a mess.
I would pay you to come organize it the same way — except you COULD buy your new work bench because it’s so scary and cluttered, I would need to pay you $3,000 to make it worth it and to get you to agree.
NOVELLA on your blog, sorry.
I am SO impressed….my garage is also my room of shame…although I can actually park one car there…only because it’s a double! I’m vowing that this Sunday I’m going to get ‘er together… I have to! Nice job…and the notes are too cute!
um. We moved. That was how we solved our room-of-shame problem. It’s BLISSFUL, I say. We don’t have a room of shame anymore! I do, however, have a chair of doom in my bedroom, where all my clothing goes. BUT! our house is soooo lovely…even our garage. Give us time, though…and three years from now we will have a room of shame, and we will require your cleaning services. heh.
Don’t be too sad about never parking in your garage…our little matrix barely fits with enough room to open the doors…and that is only if you store nothing in the garage. The garages are way too small at TL.
Center closet in the bedroom. Have considered just setting everything on fire and moving. HOW CAN WE HAVE SO MUCH STUFF? WE ONLY CAME HERE WITH 2 SUITCASES AND 2 LAPTOP BAGS IN JANUARY! IT DEFIES LOGIC!!!
I’m impressed! We used to have a room of shame – but since we gave that room to the little guy and now have two kids ruining the place, we have a whole house of shame, most days.