Garages of North America

Tim and I live in a pretty small house, by North American standards. For us, it's just right. Well ... we could use one additional room I guess. That would be excellent. Still, we're pretty happy with its size. It's easy to heat and doesn't take much to keep it clean.* Conversations in our house are easy to have, no matter whether you're all in the same room or not. Might as well be in the same room. We're basically on top of each other most of the time. (ahem!)

* disclaimer: the garage photos are not representative of the state of our actual house, thank you very much.

Anyway, here's our garage. Since the house is so tiny, most of our "stuff" is out here. Opening the garage door (on the alley) feels a little like flashing a stranger in public. Leaving the garage door open for any length of time is like undressing slowly in front of the picture window in our bedroom! I have a bit of an exhibitionist streak in me, but not that bad. Why would I want to let the whole neighborhood have a peek into this garage? Would you want to if it were your garage? I don't think so ....

"Well," you might ask, "Why are you putting these embarassing photos on the internet for the whole world to see (never mind the neighborhood)?"

I guess it's a family thing. Uncle Edward started it. Sent a couple of photos of his way-too-tidy garage to his email list. As a family, we tend to chomp on bait like that: Lunge, bite, chomp. Must be genetic. After about the 5th batch of garage photos, I decided to get serious and blog about it on our family blog. Then I decided my regular blog readers might get a kick out of it. So here it is: our garage.

If you've read this far, I am astonished and I commend you for your suffering through my mundane blitherings. If you're a glutton for punishment, read on:

My sister, Moira wrote, "Maureen, how can you find anything in that garage?" My answer: "We don't." The question mark on that apple box (above) represents, ironically, the status of most of our stuff out there. "Questionable contents"

Sigh.

Big sigh...

I wrote this to my family to accompany our Montana-garage pix:

Hi everyone, I might as well fess up. Here is our garage, of which I am not proud.

I think ours is the worst! We should win the prize for the most crammed garage. Also the prize for most disorganized, and last but not least, the prize for the garage that barely has room to walk around in, much less park a car!

Now before you hit the Reply All button and fire off a scathing email telling me we have too much stuff or that you are disowning us and from now on we are not part of the family, or that all I have to do is throw away 99% of that stuff and I'd be able to fit my car in the garage, please read this list of flimsy rationalizations:

• Our garage is probably smaller than most of yours. It measures 12 x 18
• We have stuff from all five of our kids in there
• Tim's stuff from his "former" life (before he moved to Montana) is mostly still out there. We barely let him bring his tv into the house [grin]
• I have my entire papermaking studio crammed into one end of the garage. Someday I will have my studio again!
• Three years ago I moved from a spacious office to a home office in Gabe's former bedroom which is 1/10th the size -- so most of the stuff from my business is piled in the center of the garage.
• I know -- I know... there is that "rule of thumb" that if you haven't used it in a year you don't need it -- I keep thinking "what would happen if a former client wanted me to do something else on their project and I had just tossed their files? Or what if Mickey's comic book or pez collection is really worth millions? Or what if .... ?"

Tim and I take turns when we have to go out there to find something we "need" ... neither of us ever wants to face that task! Can you see why?

Go ahead. Tell me I'm messy. I already know it, though. ;-D