And she’s nesting

I have recently just been overcome with the desire to clean out my garage. Even though it’s 9 million degrees outside. Even though I’m 30 weeks pregnant.

So Friday morning the girls and I started working. My first goals were to fill the van with things to donate and pull out things I’d like to try and sell on Kingwood Yard Sales.

The girls had fun playing with all the strollers and toys that I pulled out to get around in the garage better.

I borrowed my mom’s new camera and upgraded to a one month “premiere” membership on KYS so I could post pictures ($8), and I listed a bunch of things yesterday afternoon. I’m happy to report I’ve already made $55 (minus the $8). Yay! Whatever doesn’t sell at the end of a month will be donated.

Today my urge to get out into the garage increased, combined with a desire to park my car in there before the baby comes. So I dragged my family out there for a full work day. This is only sort of a “before” picture. It’s actually from back in April, but it looked an awful lot like this when we got started today.

I discovered there is a FLOOR in the attic space above the garage, so a lot of things changed homes today. In addition to cleaning out the garage, I also tackled the stuff stored in our pantry/laundry room (which runs the width of the garage and used to be part of the garage before it was enclosed). So we pretty much filled up the attic space up there. Delightful! I had some stuff in the garage that was marked or needed to be marked for sale in Baby Daze next month. I moved it all into my bedroom (yikes!) along with the stuff for KYS. If it does not get sold, it’s NOT coming back! We filled up the car a couple of times with stuff to trash, donate, or recycle. There are still a few things (like paint) in the garage that need to be gotten rid of. Anybody know how to get rid of paint? And I also have a couple of old CPUs that need to be wiped and recycled or something.

Okay… are you ready?

Here’s the after:

When I walked out to the driveway to take that picture and really saw what it looked like, I cried. Literally.

And then I did this:

For the first time. Ever.

And the door closed.

If you look in the after picture, there are a few things against the far wall (between Joanna and Matt) that we had to move. The van is the length of the whole garage with no room to spare. I will need to have Matt hang a tennis ball or something from the ceiling to let me know when to stop so I don’t knock the wall down. But now we’ll be able to get into the car in the pouring rain and stay dry! My next project (tomorrow?) is to move some things around in the pantry/laundry room to make some “mud room” space. If we decide to make the garage door our main entrance, I’ll need to have a spot for the purse, diaper bag, coats, shoes, etc. that we currently keep by the front door.

It feels SO GOOD to have the garage cleaned out (or mostly, anyway). There’s still a lot of work to do out there, but we’re headed in the right direction! I am so excited!