Despite taking part of a day off on Monday, progress on the garage/driveway slowed dramatically during the work week, with me generally only able to spend an hour or two on it in the evenings before it got dark. (Yes, it might have been possible to do some after dark, but since it was dark, it was hard to see what I was doing…)

Anyway, by early Saturday UTC (Friday evening local time) almost everything that was either stuff we knew we wanted to keep, or stuff that we might or might not want to keep but would have to actually spend time looking at it to know, was back in the garage. For some reason I didn’t post then, but here is what it looked like at that point:

Looks so much better than it started! Everything all I’m nice neat stacks and such!

Unfortunately, there were still huge piles of things we know we want to get rid of (either donate, recycle, or trash depending on the specific things and their condition)… Quite a bit of which were large items like furniture… and we haven’t quite yet made arrangements to have those things picked up and taken away to wherever they are going to go.

So all that had to go back too. That process just finished. At this point everything that came out of the garage (with a couple minor exceptions that were claimed by Alex or Brandy and actually are now being used or unpacked) is now back in the garage.

So what does it look like? Here ya go:

So… Well… Just as full looking as it started… Almost. It is now possible to walk a little bit in there. But just a little. But it is still very very full. I certainly didn’t reclaim 40% of the floor space as I had hoped.

But… Everything that was added between early Saturday and when I finished is stuff that is fully ready to be gotten rid of. Brandy has collected the information on who to call to come get all that stuff, and those arrangements will probably be made soon. All that stuff is fit up front and ready to go. It is no longer interspersed with everything else.

Once that stuff goes, I ink my 40% goal is indeed actually met. Perhaps even 60% or more actually. And at that point, what is left is neatly stacked and accessible, not thrown in haphazardly like it was before.

It will be in a state where it will be easy to grab one box a week or whatnot, in order to go through the box and reclaim what is still wanted, and trash what isn’t. I suspect 80% or so of what is in the boxes will actually be trashable, but unfortunately that can’t be determined on a box by box basis. We actually have to go through the boxes.

That will be a long term thing though, not a project we will attempt in the same way I did the garage straightening.

For now, next step, call the trucks to take away that big bulk of stuff we know we don’t want any more… Brandy will do that though.

I’m going to take a nap. :-)