Blue Jeans & Jelly Beans
Last Sunday, my husband and I were staggering out to the garage with the boxes of Christmas decorations we'd just taken down. We were tripping over bicycles, bins of art supplies, and cartons of HO-scale train equipment. We could hardly get the ladder out from its corner, let alone stand it up to put the boxes away on the shelf where they belong.
"You know," said my husband thoughtfully, "we should really clean up some of this stuff."
While it was obviously a good idea, the thought of cleaning out the garage sounded about as much fun as having a wart burned off. But the opportunity of having both of us available to clean was too good to pass up. We got to work.
First we sorted out the bicycles. Our youngest had outgrown the tricycle and its toddler-sized helmet. For that matter, the car seats full of cobwebs, the crib leaning against the clothes dryer, and the crib mattress perched in the rafters were also obsolete.
The suitcase my husband had bought in India to bring souvenirs home was still in the rafters, too. We had discovered that it had a peculiar creosote odor that grew stronger in confined spaces, so we'd never brought it into the house. Why had we ever kept it at all? Such is the logic of garages.
It was amazing how easy it was to get rid of things. The cans of paint I'd been working around for years turned out to be dried up. We tossed them, dusted the shelf, and voila, three square feet of empty space. Why hadn't I done this before?
The electric hedge trimmer, bought 12 years ago and used exactly once before we got gardener service, went to Goodwill. The box of fine china I'd inherited from Great-Aunt Marjorie and never used made a perfect donation to the church auction.
We only destroyed one thing. While my husband was up in the rafters, making more room, a paper sack full of glass light fixtures fell and hit the floor with a sickening crunch. That was OK; we didn't need that many replacements. We found the lone whole one amidst the fragments, though, and took it inside the house where it would be safe.
The high point of the afternoon, from my 10-year-old son's point of view, was when we found the rat. We pulled aside a sack of fertilizer, and there it was, or rather, there was its mummified corpse.
Our son dug a hole for it, but the rat, when we dumped it off the shovel, wouldn't go in. The cold dry winter had leatherized it to the point where its tail was as stiff as a yardstick. The rat seemed to be clinging to the edge of the hole and looking accusingly at us, instead of going down decently to its rest. I worked on something else while the men finished the burial, and tried to feel glad that we'd found the rat.
At the end of the afternoon, we had stuffed the trash cans full and made a huge pile of things to give away. We were tired and dirty. But what surprised me was how good I felt. Like a snake that has just shed its skin, I felt fresh and new all over. It must be a secret, I decided.
Nobody wants me to know how much fun this actually is: that's why people complain about cleaning their garages.
Maybe next Sunday afternoon we'll find something else to clean, just for fun.
Passarelli is a Mountain View resident and mother of three.