I got a lot of work done on the garage yesterday. I think I could totally finish with one more day of really buckling under and getting some serious work done. Those of you who have not been in my garage are probably wondering what in the world could be going on out there that I have been talking about cleaning it for so many months and then when I finally start doing some work on it, it takes multiple days to get it done. Let me just say this. I do NOT belong on Hoarders.
The issue is mostly centered around the fact that I have no attic. The garage is the only storage area in my home. Add to that the fact that I had an out of control Ozarka delivery man for several months last winter and my problem was compounded. I finally got the Ozarka deliveries stopped. The problem that this brought up is that when the deliveries stop, so do the empty bottle pick ups. I now am almost to the point of calling Ozarka and having them send the guy out one more time for a final pick-up of the empties along with the cooler. I only have one unused bottle left. Once it is empty. I will make the call. But until then, I have 16 5-gallon empty Ozarka bottles taking up room in my garage.
Once you get past the water bottles, the next issue I have is with junk mail. I have a couple of stacks of junk mail out there that needs to be shredded. Thanks to shows like 60 Minutes, I am afraid to throw away anything other than fliers without shredding it. But sorting and shredding mail takes time. It's not a fun task. Once I go back out there, I would estimate that about 3 hours will be spent shredding. I hate shredding. Why can't bad guys just leave the trash alone? I don't think that would be asking too much. I just want to go back to a world in which we could throw away our trash and not worry about the consequences.
The final category of junk out there that will take a little time and consideration is shoes. These aren't favorite shoes, they are shoes that I wore someplace and they were so uncomfortable that before I got all the way home they were taken off and left in the car. When I finally took them out of the car, I still had so much disdain for them, that I just sat them aside in the garage rather than bringing them in the house and taking them upstairs. So, you may think, those shoes would be easy to simply put in the Oct. 19th garage sale. You should probably be right. But yesterday as I sat out there and stared at those shoes, I kept thinking things like.... "Ohhhhhh.... those are the cutest shoes!!!!" Meanwhile, I know that they have been sitting in the garage for 8 months because the last time I wore them was absolute TORTURE! I mean, there can be little doubt that the binding of Chinese women's feet hurt less than wearing those shoes for a few short hours. And yet, I have already brought one pair in the house that I simply cannot let go of. (Insert eye-roll here.)
So, I made it through yesterday's work with only one... okay.... make that two injuries. Those of you who spend much time with me are probably pretty darn impressed at this statement. I keep my medicine cabinets stocked with a greater supply of band-aids than most emergency clinics will ever see. I do this for one reason. I am accident prone. So, the fact that I had to open a brand new box of band-aids yesterday and have since been through 4 band-aids in that box should come as no surprise. I had this old floor lamp stored in the garage. You might notice that I said "had" which indicates past tense. The floor lamp is now in the dumpster down the parking lot from my condo. But it didn't get there before doing some damage.
I had gotten it at Ikea several years ago and for a while it was a perfectly good lamp. It was never a pretty lamp, but it served the purpose. Eventually, the fact that it wasn't particularly attractive along with an issue of it falling over a lot due to a problem with the threading of one part that screwed into another forced me to move it out to the garage to await a possible garage sale or perhaps a random person passing through who might be in need of a somewhat unattractive and dysfunctional floor lamp. A few weeks ago, I went out to get some meat out of the freezer in the garage and stepped on a piece of glass. Fortunately, I was wearing shoes. But the sound of glass against concrete was unmistakable. So, I looked around and realized that the lamp, finally unable to continue to stand up straight with it's perpetual balance issue, had fallen over and the glass shade had broken. I swept glass up and threw it away knowing that I can be somewhat accident prone and wanting to minimize the risk. I left the base of the lamp where it was and didn't move anything else.
So, yesterday I started moving things out of the way so that I could get to the base, which I had decided I wouldn't even be able to sell at this point. I was going to take it to the dumpster. As I moved other items that I knew I was going to put in the garage sale to one side of the garage, working my way to the lamp, I picked up a wireless speaker from Sharper Image that I have replaced with a better one for my patio. The Sharper Image wireless speaker is garage sale bound. When I picked it up I noticed a gash out of the side of the speaker as though it was hit with a heavy and sharp object. I ran my finger across it and quickly discovered that it was damaged by a shard of glass from the lamp shade that apparently had become embedded in the plastic and was still there just waiting form some unsuspecting moron to run her finger across. With blood literally running from my hand, I rushed into the house to wash my finger and find the brand new box of "finger bandages" I bought recently.
Once the bleeding had been stemmed enough to go back to work and all of the blood had been mopped from the kitchen and bathroom floor, I went back out and picked up the speaker again. Thinking that I needed to get the glass out of the speaker so that I could sell it and someone (else) wouldn't be injured by it, I ran another finger across the glass shard to determine if it was indeed the glass that had sliced my finger open. I quickly discovered that it was! I must tell you that the glass won. It is still in the speaker and I have two fingers bandaged. Typing with two finger bandages is NOT an easy thing. Beyond the killer glass shard sticking out of the speaker it is perfectly good. But I don't feel that I can sell it with that glass there. So, I am either going to have to get a pair of pliers out there today and remove the glass or throw the darn thing away. We'll see how this goes. I might have to get an ambulance on stand by. Keep a good thought for me!
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