Tips on: Cleaning up the fucking garage! (long)

"Grindintosecond" (Grindintosecond) 01/15/2014 at 22:29 • Filed to: None

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Look, I moved in a few weeks months YEARS ago...and the garage is still packed up with junk. I tried to organize the things in boxes into a pitch/keep pile but it's now a pile with boxes on top of it. I have learned many things in the last few attempts. Here's a few tips of what I learned.

1)The process- It's about dragging a full quarter of the garage out into your driveway for the neighbors to see. At that point you can pick up the cardboard boxes from the previous two Christmasses holiday Festivusses , hell it was Christmas....twice now. Break it down and throw out all the packing junk and take the boxes to the recycling center/burn pile depending on your local laws/upbringn'. Now you have a clean quarter of a floor to work with. this is the start or order.

1a) Don't...I mean do NOT let your wife/girlfriend/sister/family-members including your dog walk in and do anything. They can open the door and tell you something, or bring you a drink but they can NOT under any circumstances enter, and do anything . If this happens, that box of your college notes/books/work doodles that was sitting perfectly on that old un-used night stand against the wall until you had a place for it now has to be put somewhere because the wife/girl..whatever took the damn nightstand and decided the girls need it in their room now. Exactly on that day at that exact moment. No other day or time would do! Now you're holding this box of crap that you think you still need until you decide next year you really don't need it and have no place to put it because you'll be creating another impetus of a PILE of STUFF that will grow because of all the other things that were perfectly sitting on something waiting patiently for you to deal with now have nowhere to be because the wife keeps entering the garage and taking things you need to put things on or putting things from inside the house into the garage because she found that exact time to decide she didn't want something in there anymore and there's not a single place for it to be in the garage nor is there a single thing for it to sit on and its useless as something to have put on it because it's so oddly shaped. (whew...breathe.....gasp....)

2) you will have 3 piles to work with when you are done....yes just in this 1/4 space of the whole area. The things you need and use, the things you cant throw out yet because it's not that special pick-up day for the hard to throw out stuff (or curb day as known in other towns), and the last pile...the trash...because it's not trash day until tomorrow. Tomorrow you will haul the trash out and take that pile with you. Also, make sure you look up those days of the hard to throw out/recycle days because I can guarantee you will be working or out of town on those days.

3) This is an excellent time to get a little organized while your prized heap is in the driveway. Get wall hooks and racks and shelves for the garage from the hardware store. Make sure you plan on the bicycle wall mounts because the frames of your wife/daughter's bikes are most likely curved and wacky so that wall mount thing wont fit. Your straight American triangle bike or mountain bike of funk design will work. Girl bikes don't. Of course.

4.)Do not get involved in ripping out the bad carpet of the project car. Leave that for when you have a clean garage space to work with. You may look at the rust holes in the floor and ponder the next step. Move on.

5.) Fold up and put in their envelope the lawn chairs you bought from Target and Wal-Mart over the last 7 years. Hang them on the wall out of the way and promise to never buy any more because you now know where they are.

6.) Get the fuck out of the project car! I told you once! It's January! Don't try to make it run you'll just screw up the engine. It's getting darker now. the kids will be home from school soon.

7.) This is the end. you have decided what to throw out and thrown it into the big bags of trash to take out tomorrow or put it with the other hard-to-pitch stuff for that special day the city has. (Again that day could be a hard-to-recycle or a community big burn it all depends on your city laws/culture.) Those two piles are isolated and the keepables are on the shelves or wall hangings. Once the 'throw out' things are actually gone the next day or so, you will have alot more room to start the same order of events for the other quarters of the project.

8-9-10) The same thing as above in steps 1-7, just repeated, however keep this in mind. At this point you should have spent enough time thinking about your hoarded filth piles and how much you have used all of those things in the last 2 years. You have'nt used it? throw it out. You don't want to sleep in 10 year old garage only sleeping bags. At this point if you try to Ebay anything it will just create more piles of junk to wade through and you'll not Ebay what you need to. this is a pile to begin with because you are not organized so Ebay wont work for you. Pitch/recycle it. Throw those 5 CDRW drives in a box with the 300,000 miles of Coax and telephone cable collected from your 5.5 years of college to get that 4 year degree and recycle it. there are places...look em up they're easy. The value of clean order is immeasurable.

I hope this helped. It's an ongoing struggle for me and I can't get any work done on the mini until I get space to use. This is working for me. This approach is helping. Don't try to find places for things that still work....that's called a pile of junk in a junk room. Don't make a junk room in your house too. You got one called a garage. Get on it on a nice day, pump some music that's not all emotional (For example a copy of a copy of a Dead Milkmen tape cassette from High School) and you'll get some progress done. Oh and don't think about how much this is worth or that is worth. Unless it's worth a whole lot it's worth more to you to be gone. Pitch it. Get on with your life. A happy garage means a happy guy with his soon to be happy car, and family too I guess.Good luck. And quit fiddling with that car until the job is done!

The Real Dacia Sandero > Grindintosecond 01/15/2014 at 23:13

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And when you stop as you are throwing things away to think you should ebay them, remember this:

1. Ebay has listing fees. They can vary a lot(sometimes you can list free, sometimes you can't)

2.Ebay charges a 10% fee of whatever you make including shipping.

3.Paypal then charges 3% of whatever you make

4. You won't get paid for a month unless you take the package to the post office to weigh it before hand and then print the label through Ebay. Even then, you don't get cash until 3 days after the buyer receives the item.

5.You will spend about 4 hours total to do the whole pics, listing, communication, shipping thing.

Ebay sucks, just throw it away.

Pabuuu, JDM car enthusiast & Italian parts hoarder > The Real Dacia Sandero 01/16/2014 at 02:35

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Dont throw it away, just sell it on some other site, I heard Craigslist is a big site there, so why not there.

Grindintosecond > Pabuuu, JDM car enthusiast & Italian parts hoarder 01/16/2014 at 08:31

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The reason thetes s big garage mess is because the Craigslist is a hassle too. besides people are now touring your atomic pile to buy your item. also assuming anyone is looking for that one thing....how long do you want to sit on it? just get it gone.

2ndstorer > Grindintosecond 01/16/2014 at 08:37

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I started mine last year to get at least one car in the garage. This winter/spring will bring about phase two, getting the other third cleaned out to have some space to work.

Unfortunately my garage isn't wide or deep enough to fit two cars and tools/workbenches. My goal is to have a good, organized workspace.

Grindintosecond > 2ndstorer 01/16/2014 at 09:19

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there are cool plans for fold up work benches that lift up against the wall covering the pegboard of tools. lots of space saving ways...

2ndstorer > Grindintosecond 01/16/2014 at 17:06

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I have started looking at those as options. The combo of low ceilings and barely 18 inches from wall to car on each side really limit things. My main goal is to be able to fit two cars in a pinch (bad weather primarily).

If you have a link to some designs you have found l would love to check them out.

Grindintosecond > 2ndstorer 01/16/2014 at 22:58

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that one is a steel table to buy and install...sticks out 6 inches when stowed...

here is a link about a sinple fold up design that you can modify for space and what not. Thre's also good stuff in the comment section with examples of what other people did. As long as you screw the hinges into the studs of the wall or a board bolted into the wall studs it should support all the weight. fold the legs in, fold the table down and above it on the wall you have your peg board of tools...that you could cover up with a sliding curtain...