Every guy knows that some jobs need to be seasoned before being tackled. Cleaning my garage is a perfect example because it has several seemingly contradictory dimensions.
For example, the garage has never really been a garage and has never housed a car in the more than three decades we have lived here.
It has, however, always been a workshop. There is a beautiful table saw, a fine miter saw and a lovely drill press awaiting tasks therein. It is also the place where broken things go to be fixed. Many of these also have become jobs that needed to be seasoned. Several broken lamps, saggy shelves and a couple wobbly chairs fall into this category.
And since the garage is not a part of the house where we gather on a daily basis (we don’t eat meals, watch TV or play the occasional game of gin out there), it is also an ideal place to store things that can’t find an immediate home in some other part of the house.
As a result, the garage has accumulated uncounted boxes, bags and storage tubs on the workbench and on top of the table saw and other tools.
This means until I deal with these boxes, bags and storage tubs, I can’t use the tools. Nor can I fix the broken things that have been seasoning there in recent months.
All of this is motivation to tackle the garage, of course, but first I need a plan for where to start. I am working on that plan every day, or at least every time I go into the garage.
To put a fine point on it, our son just gave me a fine new garage door opener to replace the one that got struck by lightning a few years ago and sagged into a curdled, molten clump. Since then I have had to raise the door by hand, a job that has grown worse since the tension springs came unraveled sometime last winter. Installing the new door opener will solve that problem.
All I need now is a place to set up my ladder so I can install the opener. I guess that means the job has finally seasoned long enough.
