THE ESCAPE INTO ROOM

Or the reason I’m not getting a new driveway. There’s a number of titles here. Getting into my garage from the outside is very much like an escape room situation. It’s probably why I avoid invitations to go to an actual escape room. My whole day is solving puzzles. My life is an escape room. First, I have to unlock two different locks on the front door. Once inside, the next thing to do is turn the alarm system off. If I delay on this or just tune out the beeping, the alarm company calls me. I’ve done it twice. Once the alarm is off, I have to unlock the two locks on the door from the kitchen into the garage. Then I slide my homemade bar lock aside and lift the garage door. I do all of this so that my scooter can be safely stored inside the garage and if I’m lucky, Michael gets home before me and has the door open when I get home.

I was not lucky on Monday.

Except this time, when I lifted up on the garage door handle, nothing happened. The door refused to move. I stood for a moment in my sweltering garage, studying the contraptions that aids in lifting a garage door. I couldn’t see anything missing or wrong, so I attempted to lift the door with more force this time. Nothing. I went inside and got Michael. He replaced one of the springy pulley things years ago. He still remembers it as his worst case of handyman’s Tourettes ever. He inspected all the things involved with lifting the garage door and noticed that one wheel of one of the pulley thingies (the newer one) refused to move. It did not take him long to declare that this was beyond his expertise. Which is fine. I’d rather he throw in the towel before seriously injuring himself. Also it was probably 110 degrees in the garage. The problem was that my scooter was still on the wrong side of that garage door.

We managed to wrestled my scooter in through the backdoor, finally using the ramp we bought eight years ago. It wasn’t easy and I nearly amputated one of Michael’s arms by smashing it between my scooter and the door jam, but we did it. My scooter is now safe inside the garage. And stuck there. While I made dinner, Michael got on the phone with a company and the end result is that we will be replacing the garage door with a brand new one. Really, this is the smartest option. I’ve lived in this house for thirteen years. The garage door was janky as F when Chris and I moved into the house. It is honestly a testament to my stubbornness that it has survived so long. The new door will not be janky at all. It will have a real locking system and an automatic door opener.

I should be over the moon about all of it.

It will be at least three weeks before anyone can come out for the installation of the new garage door. My scooter is now safe, but also trapped in the garage. And this is honestly not how I wanted to be spending money this year. It feels like we’re starting to hemorrhage and barely have everything under control. I was hoping to be in a tightening the budget mode by the end of this month so we could start socking money away for a new driveway. I totally heard sad trombones while typing that last sentence. Why would anyone want to sock money away for a new driveway?!?! One might sock away money for a new car or a vacation to Italy. Not for a concrete road that leads from the garage to the actual road. It is a sad, boring and very expensive purchase.

Home ownership is an albatross.

The list of wants that I have for my house just keeps growing, like an upgraded electrical system so we can install solar panels and a charging station for the EV will we own one day. I’d really like to gut my kitchen, add some outlets (I have two and if they are all in use at the same time, the circuit blows), and make it a more efficient tiny house space. While we’re at it, it would be nice to turn the current pantry into a staircase to the basement, maybe replace the giant dining room window with French doors that lead out to a back patio and possibly add a porch to the front of the house with an easier entrance. Once that’s all done, we could see about really getting the basement leak proof and converted it into a proper living space. And then….

The list is never ending.

And I guess…the garage door is also on that list. In three weeks, I can take it off the list of wants for the house and I will no longer have to escape room my way into my garage.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

Cindy Maddera on Instagram: "V got a new boyfriend"

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Michael had one job that I wanted from him this summer while he was on summer vacation. That one job was to tackle the garage. We had almost talked ourselves into building a shed in the backyard because the garage had gotten so bad. Michael’s new scooter is bigger than his old one. Add in two bicycles, camp gear, an old Radio Flyer wagon we don’t ever use, chicken supplies, gardening tools, extension cords, and just the junk that accumulates in the garage and you’ve got yourself one unusable mess of a space. The garage was frustrating. Then, during our awful awful winter, Michael looked at me and said “Can I buy a snowblower?” I said “Yes, but only if you promise with your whole heart that you will clean out the garage this summer.” He agreed but said “What happens if I don’t end up cleaning out the garage?” I told him that I would send the snowblower back.

Michael cleaned out the garage this week.

The garage came with a set of built-in wooden shelves and you would think that this was a useful feature. Except they take up a lot of real-estate when it comes to scooter parking. Michael ripped half of the shelves out and moved the bike hooks to that wall. Now our bicycles hang flat against a wall and our scooters have space between them when we park. I can actually take my bike off of this hook on my own. Before, it was hanging from the ceiling. I could not hang it or take it off of that hook without bruises. The other evening, I got home and Michael and the Cabbage were off on his scooter somewhere. I was able to pull my scooter into the garage and turn it around in side the garage. Trust me when I tell you that turning a scooter around on a flat surface is far easier than having to do it on a slope. With broken asphalt. We also switched parking spaces, so that if I do have back out of the garage it’s easier to turn around. I back out while turning to the right and then move forward turning to the left and then I’m facing the street. We still think a backyard shed will help us out a lot. We can put the lawnmower and other lawn stuff in there as well as the chicken supplies. Michael did have to take all the camp gear to the basement to get it out of his way. So we might buy an extra rack of shelves for the basement just for camping stuff.

Doesn’t matter. What matters is that the garage is a usable space now. I am thankful for the work Michael put into it. Right now he’s at the doctor, being treated for some kind of spider/bug bite that he probably sustained while cleaning out the garage. That’s how hard he worked! He should know that all of his work is greatly appreciated.

I am also thankful that I don’t have to send his snowblower back.

GARBAGE

How I spent my Saturday morning.

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Saturday morning, I returned from grocery shopping and went straight to work in the basement. I organized the totes that had been pulled from the shelves and riffled through. Michael, when he's on the hunt for something, will open up totes and rummage through them and then just walk away. For ever. I put totes back together, organized old camp gear into one spot, took loads and loads of just plain garbage and placed them in my Bagster bag. When I'd done as much as I could in the basement, I moved to the garage, systematically moving from shelf to shelf and tossing things into a garbage bag. I organized gardening stuff like seeds and bags of potting mix. The animals at one time had nocked over a bag of grass seed and a bag of pebbles. I swept all of this up. Michael showed up just in time to help me haul out the garage garbage pile I had built near the door and to clean off a shelf containing random tools. 

There were two contractor bags full of stuff from our last basement clean out. One of them had stayed down there for so long because it was too heavy for our trash dumpster. It sat there for over a year. Every time I walked down to the basement, my eyes landed right on that bag. It was hard to miss since it was right at the bottom of the stairs. That was the first thing I hauled up the stairs. When I say 'hauled', I really mean hauled because that bag was HEAVY. There was a lot of me talking out loud to myself, counting steps, grunting and sweating, but I got that bag out of the basement and into the dumpster bag. After that, the rest was easy. Suddenly, getting rid of trash, didn't seem so overwhelming. It didn't take long for me to fill up my Bagster bag. The garage is now neatly organized and things are easier to get to without stepping on the wrong end of a shovel or falling into a pile of chicken feed bags. I also have a legitimate laundry space in the basement, where I can walk through with a basket of clothes without bumping into a stack of boxes and trash. The basement floor is clean, so when I drop an article of clothing while moving it from the washer to the dryer, I don't have to re-wash it or throw it away or burn it. The basement floor does not have a five second rule for anything. Now, at least in the area where the washer and dryer are, the floor is clean.

There's still things I need to get rid of, but they are all things that I don't want to throw away. They are things that need to be sold or donated or gifted away. My goal for the weekend was to get rid of the garbage and that is exactly what I did. My goal for the rest of this year and the following year is to remove unwanted and unused things from the house, clean out catch all drawers and never let any of those things make it to the basement. Because if it ends up in the basement, it will be there for the rest of my life. Someday, someone's going to have to come clean out my house when I die or get too old to live there on my own. I want to make things easy for that person. I think of the stuff that accumulated in just the attic of my childhood home. Boxes of papers from our school days, old clothing patterns, wrapping paper, things that had sat up there for so many years that it was now warped from heat and unrecognizable. So much of it was unsalvageable. At the very least I'd like to leave behind a good estate sale and not boxes of useless old mail with mouse chewed edges or carpenter bags of garbage.

At the end of the day, all that will be left to be dealt with will be the furniture, a small closet of clothes, small kitchen appliances, some art work and some nicknacks. All of this makes it sound like I'm planning for my death. I guess, in a way, I am, but really I'm planning for living. I am always thinking about the dirty garage or the gross basement. These things take up brain space whenever I am out doing fun things or sitting still on the couch. I am always thinking "I really should do something about the trash in the basement." Then I let myself get overwhelmed by the amount of work that is going to be involved and I do nothing. So now the filth and grossness has just become a guilt loop that plays always in the back of my mind. Instead of fully just being present in something, I am eighty something percent present and the rest percent thinking about the mess and being overwhelmed by the mess. 

I am stronger than that! I am a doer! When did I forget that? I do not shy from hard work. I tackle. Cleaning out the garbage is just one step towards reclaiming bits of myself that I've hidden away for some reason. It's like I've been in hiding and I don't even know why. Now I'm thinking about the next project that I've been putting off because it seems overwhelming and I'm totally ready to take it on. Look out hedges and over grown vegetation. I'm coming for you next.