By Trina Machacek
I drove my truck inside my garage yesterday. Not an unusual event. I am lucky that I have more than one place to store stuff, so I can actually fit my truck into my garage. But! Yes, a stuffed to the rafter’s garage “but.” No matter how much “other” space I have, my garage still catches too much overflow.
Trina Machacek
There is, for some unknown reason, an immense number of flies that gather and die in my garage. It has always been like that. There’s nothing dead in there. There is no old fly home for old flies to go to die in there. But every year flies gather there and by the time I notice how many there are, the floor looks like it is hairy with all the little fly corpses. That’s what I noticed yesterday when I drove in the garage. Dead flies by the millions.
Now I can go two ways here. I can attack the garage and clean it out. Or, I can sweep where I can reach with the truck parked in there. Since my garage is car oriented but it houses my truck there isn’t much room to sweep with Buddy, (yes Buddy is my truck,) with Buddy in the garage. So just like I have been doing all winter, I left the garage with the million dead flies on the floor. It will have to wait until spring. Or maybe summer. After all, isn’t cleaning the garage a summer activity?
I find the secret to having a clean garage is all in the eye of the beholder. I have friends who live in cities, in neighborhoods of many homes with garages. Often, in summer, you can drive up a street in neighborhoods where garage doors are open for various reasons. I get a kick out of looking in garages in towns. Where their home is on a lot and there is no other space except in the garage to store everything. You can definitely see the different personality types by just peeking in garages. Looking in mine several years ago, when my other half was still alive, we had a type “A” personality garage. A place for everything and everything in its place. Now I have what can be described as a wanna be type A garage, but it has slipped a few letters. It’s more of a type “Q” garage now. Q for quagmire. Yes, quagmire as in an awkward, complex, or hazardous situation. What was his secret to always having everything neat and tidy? Then it hit me.
There were two of us. One, me, stuffing, putting things hither and yon. Second, him always putting up a hook for this or hanging a strap to store the umbrella or to hang the fold-a-boat up out of the way. Yes, I have a fold-a-boat. It will probably be up there, folded neatly with its oars, seats and anchor, from now until doomsday as I can’t see me unfolding the 12-foot plastic hull and making it sea worthy, alone. Oh and it gets better. I also have an electric motor that goes with ye ole fold-a-boat. It fell off the hook once and I ran over the handle. Didn’t hurt it bad, but it did change the angle of the handle.
I laugh now at the fact that I was a very young 62 when I became a widow. I remember giving thought to taking that boat down, putting it together and with the electric motor putting around in some body of water. Years ago I actually was thinking that, as I was unloading this HUGE new freezer I bought because mine died one hot summer. I hooked up a trailer, drove to Twin Falls, Idaho, some 250 miles, bought the HUGE thing, came home unloaded it replaced the old one. After cleaning it out and trying to save some really old half frozen things. Yes, I remember thinking of that boat that day. I think that was the first time I knew ole fold-a-boat would be up there, where it was hefted some years before, it would be there for the rest of my time here on Mother Earth. But I have slipped on the dead fly covered floor, haven’t I?
All of that story to come to the conclusion that the secret to a clean garage is no secret at all. It takes three things to have a clean garage. One, never put anything from your house out in the garage thinking you will take care of it later. Second, force yourself to take one warm summer day each year to fuss about the appearance of your garage. Third? Never, ever buy a fold-a-boat. Unless you want to buy mine.
Trina lives in Diamond Valley, north of Eureka, Nevada. She loves to hear from readers. Email her at itybytrina@yahoo.com
