A successful Intention or another failed Resolution? Get a clean garage
Tuesday November 30, -0001
A successful Intention or another failed Resolution? What a clean garage can do for your life.
Did you even bother with a New Year’s Resolution? That may depend on how old you are. Remembering too many failed resolutions makes one ask “why bother?”
Because of the Pain! Is the pain great enough!?! Probably not! We’ve lived with it for an entire year, what’s another day or two (or year).
But the Fear of Greater Pain! That might be our answer! We could wait, for a moment in time, when the pain is terrible OR we can set a New Years Intention to minimize the inevitable, or completely avoid the next, painful moment.
If there is so much clutter that you can’t pull your car inside, it is no big deal until the National Weather Alert warns of a tornado and golf ball size hail. Not having a clean garage is no big deal until it’s your mother who tripped and now has a broken wrist. So much disorganization is no big deal until you realize that you spent half an hour just looking for something that should have taken 5 seconds to go and pick up from where you would normally put it. Enough space to park your car is no big deal until you wake up in the morning and see it has been vandalized while parked on the street. Stuff stacked to the ceiling is no big deal until you need to present the home to potential buyers.
OK, you may fear a Greater Pain! So QUIT blaming who created it. It Doesn’t Matter! It is a mess and it’s YOUR fear! Now look at what you can do to change it to a clean garage. Get rid of stuff you don’t need or use! Gift it, recycle it, repurpose it, put it where it should have been to begin with, or ultimately throw it away. What you end up with should now belong in your garage!
Find products that will help keep what belongs in your garage, organized and maximize the space you have. The Holey Rail for instance is a great storage system to help you create an organized garage. Appearance, durability, versatility, strength and cost are all imperative factors for long term satisfaction of a storage system. A garage is a working environment and safety should also be a major factor in the who’s, what, why, when, where and how you get organized.
Set aside a day and have everyone that lives in the household participate so that you can have a clean garage. Make it fun! Put some ribs on the BBQ. Turn some music on. Get the waterguns out. This will be an EVENT to remember! And it’ll begin to set the stage for a way of living.
An organized garage is not static. Things are changing constantly, if it’s like mine, it almost has a life of its own. What it looks like today is a bare resemblance of what it looked like a year ago. So you might take a photo before you begin organizing your garage and post it above your workbench with the year written on it. This will help you remember what it was like before. We recommend using the Holey Rail as just one of many tools to help you keep a clean garage. Include beside the picture, a list of the primary reasons (single words that will remind you) why you choose to have an organized garage.
Be patient with the process and those that use the garage and its contents. Having a clean garage is a lifestyle change that will offer rewards in ways that you may never imagine possible.
It’s also a reality check.
For some of us, carving a path from one end of the garage to the other might be a lifelong dream or an occasional challenge. Others might have to choose between which model of shiny new toolbox to purchase. The point is that “getting organized” is not a resolution with measurable results. It’s a manner of living. Don’t beat yourself up, criticize, judge or even want more than you can have in a reasonable time period based on your own personal limitations. Instead, congratulate yourself and your family on the progress that you do make and celebrate it at the end of the day. Remember, you did put ribs on the BBQ and they should be about done.