Clean garage mission accomplished ... almost

It took three weekends, including some Saturdays and Sundays, but Sherri and I accomplished a feat that can be daunting to many couples and families.

Just the words strike fear:

CLEANING OUT THE GARAGE!

When my wife parked her SUV inside on Sunday afternoon after eight months on the driveway alongside my bucket-of-bolts, it felt like a triumphant moment, indeed.

Felt so good, Sherri put a picture of it on Facebook.

Her garage had been relatively uncluttered before we married 13 months ago and I moved in plastic bins and cardboard boxes of my "stuff."

Then my in-laws returned the family Sunfish they'd had for awhile, the boat took the SUV's place inside the garage and my things got moved into storage down the street.

That's the way it stayed until about a month ago when we decided to get busy.

Not only would we get the garage back, we'd save the monthly freight at storage, too.

Sure, there was the tedium of going through boxes, pitching this and saving that.

It's amazing how much stuff you considered invaluable a few years, but isn't so valuable now and gets tossed.

The real fun part was taking out a big cabinet along one wall that was probably had more things on top of it than were in the drawers.

Once we cleared it of everything, we removed the screws in the cabinet's walls, top and bottom and went to town with a sledgehammer.

Bing! Bang! Boom!

The only glitch occured when I struck a panel and a strip of wood flew off, knocked over a box of glass bowls we saved from our wedding reception, shattering one of them.

Since if came from the Dollar Store, Sherri wasn't upset.

Whew!

That was two weekends ago.

This past weekend, we moved the boat against the wall, installed ceiling hooks for our bikes --- with a big assist from my father-in-law, Jim Manring --- and stacked plastic bins of things I still have to sort through.

At last, the garage was clear for Sherri's SUV.

What a feeling.

Now she wants me to do the same with our walk-in closet.