Our lovely garage

I started attacking the scary place that we call our garage this morning. We do not have attic storage in our house, so anything that we do not know what to do with gets put in the garage. It is a keeping place for yard tools, baby items, bicycles, strollers, toys that are being rotated out, and lots and lots of junk! We do manage to have room to pull our van in, but there is not much room to walk. It gets unbearably hot in there, so I decided I would try to work a few minutes a day, until I can see a bit more of the floor.

I started with our shelves. I am amazed at how many products we have to kill bugs. We can spray them, dust them, bomb them, or swat them. If that does not work, we can put poison in our spreader or mix up some concentrated solution to zap them. I think that if the whole engineering thing falls through for Mark, he may have a future in pest control!

I found a box of yearbooks from middle school through the years that I was teaching. I still have not quite figured out what you are supposed to do with these ten pound books. I did enjoy looking at the pictures and reading the things that people wrote. I have notes from middle school friends that said things like, "I will never forget you." I have forgotten them -- I have no idea who they are! I enjoyed looking at pictures from the eighties and early nineties. I was made for those hair styles! I also chuckled at the description of me in the 1994 yearbook of the school where I was teaching -- "Miss Jones enjoys exercising(???) and reading."

I also unpacked a box of dishes that belonged to my grandmother. My parents mailed them to me before we moved here, but I had not gotten around to opening the box. I really like the pattern on the dishes, and I am looking forward to using them!

The children discovered the box of toys that I had been accumulating in the garage. Whenever I start to get frustrated with toys that are not being picked up, I begin secretively packing a few away. I always choose the ones that nobody is playing with. It was almost like Christmas when they started pulling those toys out of the box!

Our garage still needs a lot of work, but it already looks better!