It’s been almost three and a half years since I wrote about The Garage of Doom, my second post on this blog. This is what the garage looked like then, waist-high with stuff:

The Garage of Doom

Many boxes still needed to be unpacked from our move into the house 28 years ago. Some of the accumulated stuff was pure junk, but some of it had value to me. It reminded me of happy times, when my children were small, when loved ones, now deceased, were still alive. I remembered how much money we invested in this stuff.

I had to face the fact that, if we’d managed to survive up to 28 years without these things, we probably didn’t need them now. I did unearth some family heirlooms, but we’d already bought newer versions of much of the other stuff.

To be responsible stewards of our garage contents, we had to determine what we needed to keep, what could be given away, what could go in the recycling bin, and what should go in the dumpster. Working anywhere from 15-75 minutes a day (except when it was too hot or too cold, or when we were too tired or too busy) we worked until we’d filled the recycle bin and the dumpster many times over, and made dozens of trips to Goodwill and the fiber recycling collection point. We also made a few trips to the hazardous materials disposal site with buckets of old paint and old bottles of chemicals.

Many times during the process, my husband, Greg, said, “Let’s just pay somebody to haul everything away.” I couldn’t. I knew there were priceless treasures among the trash.

Finally, just before Christmas, I unpacked the last box from our move, and Greg removed the last worthless debris from our garage. We still have too much stuff in there, but what a difference, right?

This shot was taken from almost the same angle as the picture above. New door.

I don’t know if you can tell, but the garage door was wooden, very heavy, and dilapidated. Greg had been saying for many years that it hurt his feelings to see how much the garage door detracted from our house’s appearance. And, of course, I always said we had to empty the garage before we could get a new door. And I wanted an automatic door opener, too.

The new garage door was installed two weeks ago, and, for the first time ever, we parked our cars in the garage. Hallelujah!

Did you ever have a household project that took years to finish? Tell us about it in the comments below.