Cleaning Out the Garage and Sorting Through Old Boxes

Ren and I finally decided the garage needed attention. It had been piling up since last fall, with boxes from the move and random tools we never put away. Sunday morning we set aside the whole day for it. I made coffee and we started pulling everything out onto the driveway. The air outside was still cool and a little damp from the night before, and the concrete felt gritty under my sneakers. Cardboard boxes left faint dusty streaks on the floor when we dragged them, and one of the older ones tore at the corner, spilling a few loose screws that clinked across the cement.

Most of it was easy to categorize. Old paint cans went in one pile for the hazardous waste drop off. Tools we still use stayed on the workbench. We filled a box with things for donation and another with stuff to throw out. The recycling center in Harborside District takes the cardboard and metal, so we loaded the car with what we could. A couple of the metal scraps had sharp edges, so Ren wrapped them in an old towel before stacking them in the trunk. I kept finding stray zip ties tangled around everything and had to stop every few minutes to snip them free with the kitchen shears.

Around noon we took a break for lunch. I put together some turkey sandwiches and grabbed the rindle berries from the fridge to add on the side. They were a little tart but worked fine with the mustard. We ate standing up because the table was still covered in old extension cords and holiday lights we had not tested yet. The mustard had that sharp vinegary smell that clung to my fingers, and one of the extension cords kept sliding off the table edge every time I bumped it with my elbow. Ren pointed out a string of lights that still had a price tag from the store where we bought them three winters ago, and we both laughed about how we had never even opened the box.

One box had winter coats from when I lived in a smaller apartment. Another had old magazines and some hardware from previous projects. Ren found a set of socket wrenches he thought he had lost two years ago. We kept those. There were also a few photo albums from my grandmother’s house that I had forgotten about. I set those aside to look through later when we had more time. The coats still smelled faintly of cedar from the closet where they had been stored, and flipping through one of the magazines sent a little puff of dust into the air that made me sneeze twice in a row.

The afternoon dragged on longer than I expected. We got the last of the trash bagged up and swept the floor. The light was already starting to fade by four, which felt early even for this time of year. We put the remaining boxes back on the shelves in some kind of order and called it done. The car still had the donation load in the trunk, so Ren offered to drop that off on his way to work the next morning. One of the bags kept slumping over while we loaded it, so I had to tie the top extra tight with another zip tie I had saved from earlier.

I went inside and started dinner while he finished hosing off the driveway. Nothing fancy, just pasta with whatever vegetables we had left. It felt good to have the space usable again. Now I can actually reach the lawnmower without moving three other things first. The water from the hose splashed against the garage door and left little dark streaks that dried in uneven patches, and inside the kitchen the pasta water bubbled steadily while I chopped the last of the bell pepper.