Decluttering Diaries: The Empress Garage Edition
By Pat Donaldson
Hi. I’m Pat and I own the store in Empress.
I’m not a hoarder, but then again I don’t send a lot of stuff to the dump. I’m also in my ninth decade and have been thinking that it’s time I tidied up some loose ends.
My garage, for example.
Imagine my garage shrouded in the shadows of two decades' of accumulated clutter.
Stacks of boxes teeter on the edge of collapse. The contents a mystery because the labels, once carefully written with a fat felt pen, are faded and unreadable.
Old furniture, some of which I don’t even recognize, buried under layers of dust and mouse droppings,
Tools - hubby’s, mine, my adult kids and somebody else’s, scattered haphazardly between bygone technology and broken appliances including an old pizza oven and a pot belly stove from a CPR caboose.
Sporting equipment from the 1950’s, remnants of sewing projects and hobbies long abandoned. Four, no five, non-functioning generators, three mobility scooters I keep in case I have to harvest parts and an array of gardening tools including three useless whipper-snippers.
Some of you may relate. But other readers, who park cars and trucks in their garages, are probably having a tsk-tsk moment.
It’s you messy folks who will want to know how my garage morphed from a dump to a respectable storage facility.
It starts out with a tale of woe.
While in Oyen last week, my husband (his name is Ross) was sitting in his beater Ford Focus station wagon when a stranger knocked on his car window.
“Hi,” said the gentleman. “I have a car identical to yours.”
The gentleman, (his name is Robert) had hitched into Oyen from the highway where his car broke down. To make the car part of this story short, Ross had AMA tow Robert’s car to our local mechanic for diagnosis and repairs which took three days because of much back and forthing to source the appropriate parts.
On one of those back and forths, Ross’ car developed the identical timing belt problem that Robert foretold when he said, “I have a car just like yours.” But my husband was lucky enough to be able to coax his beater to the garage without calling AMA. He used my car to pick up his car parts and mine didn’t break down because it’s not a Ford.
While all this was going on, Ross offered Robert a bed in his spare room, and tit-for-tat Robert transformed Ross’ basement and two garages, (which previously looked like somebody had bombed Canadian Tire), into superbly organized storage and work spaces.
More about Robert.
Robert had been laid off from his job in Regina last year and discovered that fifty year olds have a tougher time finding work than twenty year olds. EI had run out and so did his ability to keep a roof over his head. With the few dollars he had left he decided to head to Edmonton and couch surf with his mother while he continued to job hunt. By the way, among a bunch of other skills, the gentleman has twenty-five years experience installing commercial overhead doors.
Anyway, Robert showed me photos of his de-cluttering super-powers and I immediately hired him to clean up my garage. I have mobility issues so I couldn’t go outside and point out this and that. Instead, I sent him out to reconnoitre and come back with a report.
When he returned I learned what was going to go down. Mr. Clean was going to haul most things outside to what he called a staging area so that he could wipe this, move that, sort some stuff into what he suspected was garbage (but would let me decide) and generally reorganize my junk into appropriate categories. Unlike what he did for Ross he specifically said that he wasn’t going to clean individual pieces of my flotsam or do a thorough sort through the boxes, but would peek inside and do his best to put stuff where it belonged.
That worked for me!
Next morning saw him laying sheets of plywood over the snow to create his staging area and the real drudgery began. Every once in a while he’d come in with a question or a photo. I was flabbergasted when I saw a picture of empty shelves and a floor that hadn’t seen the light in fifteen years.
The best part was that I didn’t have to “babysit” him. He has the smarts and the initiative to assess the job, prioritize actions and complete the work. At the beginning of the project I explained that my garage was never going to house a car and neither was it going to be used for repair work. I needed storage space and at the end of the day that’s what I got.
He even fixed my garage door.
Wow! What a guy!
I told Robert that he should quit looking for a job and start a de-cluttering business. Turns out he would love to and already has a business name in mind. But with his meagre, read non-existent, resources he hasn’t known how to get started.
That’s where I come in. By sharing the story of how I got a tidy garage maybe Robert can connect with his first customers.
Do you, or anyone you know, have a space that needs to be organized to make it functional?