A happy confluence of cool weather in Houston and the standard number of adults at home this weekend (no one visiting us and neither Donna nor I traveling) allowed us to start and complete one of our winter objectives: clean out the garage.
We actually use our garage for our cars, rather than using it for a substitute basement to store anything we didn't want to look at, so this was an achievable project for one weekend. We completely emptied the garage, trashing what we could and sorting the rest, and then put it all back.
I would say we got rid of about half the things in the garage. It did not amount to all that much, but many of the items we trashed were paints or old garden supplies; some of this will take a special trip to the recycling center to dispose of properly.
Among the notable things I ran across during the project were: 2 dead rats, about 40 lethargic cockroaches (now dead), and a fluorescent light I'd like to install in the attic.
The cockroaches deserve a little more detail. We had lots of old bricks piled up next to the garage leaning against the fence. To save garage space, I thought I'd move all our bricks to this area but off of the fence so it doesn't warp the fence. While I was moving the bricks in the pile away from the fence, I encountered some cockroaches.
I don't like cockroaches, especially once I discovered they could fly. As I moved the bricks, sometimes there would be a cockroach or two clinging to one side of the brick. I hate cockroaches. They were not moving much (I guess the cold weather made them slow), so I was able to grab another brick and smash them, wincing the whole time. If there were large cockroaches (2 inches or larger), they often appeared by themselves or in pairs. The times I saw small cockroaches (less than 0.5 inches), there were often in larger numbers. Each one I smashed with a brick, while wincing.
I estimate I killed about 40 of them, but that may be a conservative estimate. The worst brick had over a dozen on it. It was harder to squish the smaller ones, but I just kept on smooshing until I didn't see any twiching going on.
Needless to say, after this ordeal I decided I didn't want to store the bricks outside. I spread out the outside bricks in the driveway so they could dry out somewhat, and then the next day moved them into the garage. It's great seeing the neat piles of bricks (sorted by type, of course) sitting in the garage where the wood pile used to be. We may end up using the bricks for edging the flower gardens in the front yard, so now I can see precisely how many we have and if we have enough for specific areas.
Moving all of those bricks around was the most tiring part of working on the garage. It made me appreciate the "The Three Little Pigs" story and how that third little pig had his house of bricks. I think I would not expect my house of bricks to collapse after all that work. I'm glad it paid off for that little pig and his two brothers.