Domino Effect

So. You know, dear regular readers of this blog, that I've been working on the garage. Generally cleaning things up and putting up new shelves to store the crap we've accumulated.*

You also know how these projects have a tendency to cascade.

Allow me to demonstrate.

Back in March, the pandemic hit and my company sent me home to work. That meant a lot of time in the study in front of the computer. Now, when I work, I like distractions. Music. Videos. Sometimes games while I'm waiting on other people. My wife, who also has a computer in the study, has a very different approach to work. Maybe a little music. But mostly silence and concentration.

She went through a few months of this, then not too long ago moved her computer next door to the craft room. She hung a picture of me on the wall so she wouldn't forget what I look like. But that meant a lot of shuffling things around in both rooms, and the conclusion came that there was too much stuff in the craft room.

So we went to Home Depot, got some insulation and started working in the garage. After relocating shelves in the craft room and making them longer, of course.

Working in the garage meant, as I've already blogged, removing the garage window. Which is fine, since it'll give me a good long wall to practice replacing siding on before I get to the more visible parts of the house.

But doing the shelves meant moving stuff. Which includes my workbench, which will require more shelving, and the freezer, which means removing other shelving and replacing it since the Christmas trees have to live somehwere.

Then today the ping-pong table, conveniently stored in the basement blocking our access to the DVD shelves, collapsed and was threatening to fall on us, crushing us all. Because whoever engineered this thing wanted a sturdy, sturdy table but one that folded in half for easy storage, and supported it with the worst spindly assortment of screwed-together piping ever seen outside of a paper straw factory.

So the debris is now in the garage, in the location where I want to put my tool shelves. Meaning the table has to be fixed and relocated before the shelves can go up.

So I have unilaterally decided the table is going to become an outdoor appliance, once I reconstruct it so it has a sturdy foundation. I'll throw a tarp over it during inclement weather, or figure out a way to make it party dismantleable so it can be stored in the garage. or it'll burn down under mysterious circumstances and I won't know why.

And that still leaves half a house worth of siding in the garage spot meant for my car.

It's never going to get there.

*Yes, I've tried to weed through the crap. I occasionally succeed in passing off some of it to someone else, or sneaking some of it into the trash when no one is looking. But we still have lots and lots and lots of crap.