Lessons from the Garage

Once the holiday festivities were behind us, and the new year upon us, my hubby and I decided to prioritize cleaning out the garage.? Between the normal things two middle-aged married humans with two children, multiple homes, multiple employers, and multiple hobbies have collected over time, compounded by inheriting things over the last couple of years as we’ve lost family members, our garage had become a storage nightmare.? It was hard to move, hard to navigate, and more importantly, left no room to optimize.?

After a grueling six hours on our Monday off, we had discovered missing things, relived memories from childhood through adulthood, found new homes for some things, parted ways with a number of items, and now have a space which, though still not perfect, is more useful and organized than when we started.

As I reflected on the experience, I realized in many ways the things we have ahead of us are our own version of “organizing our garage” and in many respects, we will share much of the same journey I just took with my hubby.? So in that spirit, let me share some of my “Lessons from the Garage” as we think about what 2023 will bring for our careers, our homes, our relationships and ourselves.

It will get messier before it gets better

At one point, in an effort to organize two boxes, I had somehow unpacked four boxes which lay scattered around me in lumpy piles, and my shredder was overflowing. I got up to refill my coffee and when I returned, I almost quit.

Sometimes, to do the hard work you need to do to set things up for success, you have to dismantle a lot of things and put them back together better, even some things that individually might have been ok in and of themselves in order to achieve a higher purpose.? If you stop in the middle of that process and look up, it can be discouraging for a moment, as the process of getting to “better” is littered with a bunch of “not so good” moments and frequently looks like utter chaos.? It’s a process - it will get messier before it gets better.? Stay focused on the end goal.

Sometimes you have to make room for others

I had a box of random stuff I accessed more regularly, and I knew right where everything was.? But it was in a place that suboptimized a bunch of stuff that my hubby needed to access.? So we moved it.?

I was that mouse in “Who Moved My Cheese” - I was uncomfortable because we moved my stuff.? But it was the right thing for the “us”.? We will have to make room for changes in things we are comfortable with to get to a solution that might be better for the broader set of constituents in our goal - even if the only constituent is the self we want to be.

Not everything that used to serve us well still does

Some things were easy. The too-small t-shirt from my ex-husband's medical school alma mater. The hose from a carpet cleaner that doesn't exist any more in a house that only has hardwood floors. The Rolodex from 1996 (and yes, that is the actual Rolodex from my garage pictured above).

But there were so many things that I looked at as we sorted and thought “I spent good money on this” or “We used to use this all the time” or "Grandma used to have this in her living room". The 2 Mega Pixel Olympus camera that was my first foray into a REAL digital camera before the phone in our pocket could do anything more than T-9 texting and grainy pictures. The old hiking boots that got shoved to the back of the garage in favor of my sleeker, leaner trail runners. The Limoges china punch bowl set.

But I had to realize that what was absolutely true and logical at one point in our life no longer served us in the same way it used to.? And when I realized that, the right answer was to get rid of it or give it away.?

We will find objects and tools, processes and templates, or habits and thoughts that were probably super helpful and useful at the time we acquired them, developed them or adopted them, maybe even poured our precious time and energy into creating them.? But sometimes to make things better, we have to give up or get rid of things we may be personally attached to because of our history with them.? Not everything that used to serve us well still does.

The road to good is paved with some grumpiness

Last night, before I went to bed, I felt this sigh of relief.? I’d found the old car title that was missing and a piece of jewelry my mom left me when she passed away.? There was room to walk in the second bay of the garage, and the necessities like toilet paper and paper towels were once again in reach and weren't obstructed by the unused bike and two coolers.?

But at about 4 pm yesterday, I was just uncharacteristically grumpy.? Pouty, frowny-faced, snippy, impatient, and short-tempered at my hubby for roping me into this stupid task (I'm sure if it had been my idea, I'd still have been grumpy but wouldn't have thought it was stupid at all). My hands were dirty, my lower back hurt, and I was frustrated that I’d spent five hours just working on this one project and hadn’t done anything else I wanted to do, like exercise or go to the beach.?

Any improvement project - whether a process improvement, or self-improvement - is like that too. When it's over and you’re at “good” you look back on fondness for the process of getting there, because you can see and feel the results.? But in the middle of it, sometimes you’re grumpy.? And that’s normal.

*****

After spending just a few hours in my garage, I feel this sense of optimism for 2023. Some of the "big" projects require us to break it down into smaller chunks that we can digest - after all, how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. However, if we can go into everything we seek to improve recognizing that we’re going to have to make it a little messy to make it better, get a little dirty, and even experience a case or two of the “grumpies”, we are going to be pleasantly surprised by the results.

Take one last look through that Rolodex, remember all the contacts fondly, then make space for something better.