We finished cleaning out the garage yesterday. It took several days, spread out over several weeks, but we finally got it done. Kevin and I both sacrificed a few vacation days to work on it, and Matt even helped us out. Now we’re waiting for a bulk pickup this week and all the garbage will be gone. Most other things were donated to Goodwill, and you saw what we did (and are still doing) with the DVDs and BluRays.

It seemed, early on in the beginning of the cleaning days, like we could have maybe been on an episode of Hoarders, but then when I thought about it, we were far from the point ALL of the people featured on that show had gotten! It was way over the top most of the time, and always included their houses too, not just their garages. They were literally LIVING in it! I can’t imagine being in a situation like any of those.

Anyway, back to our garage. Among the huge piles of “stuff” were many boxes, appliances, clothes, and household items that had sat in the garage since we moved here seven years ago, as well as a lot of Sandy’s father’s things that were still in the garage when we moved in. As you can imagine, our garage has had its share of tiny “visitors” over those years, many of which made themselves right at home–they shredded all manner of clothing and created bedding for themselves, and a few of them even built a two-room condo out of a two-holed cinder block.

We ran into a few stragglers too, seemingly still very surprised that we had disturbed them and destroyed their homes, and they quickly took flight and left the garage as fast as they could. The puppies found one running through the yard one day and just had a ball chasing it around and nipping at it until it managed to find its way out of the fenced-in yard.

A few others were much less fortunate and seemed to have passed away at some point, perhaps during one of our coldest winters in the past seven years. We found at least three mice that were completely petrified and skeletally preserved. I took a photo of one, which reminded me a lot of a photo Stephen King recently posted on Twitter of one that he found in his garden. The photo of one I found is on the left.

If you want to see it in full detail, just click on the thumbnail. He even still has his whiskers! Kinda creepy, and as I mentioned, much like Stephen King’s own find. Stephen King’s is on the right. Same deal, click it to see it in full detail if you’re not too grossed-out. The ones we found found were pretty dried-out and fossilized. King’s looks like it might have been a bit more “juicy” from being preserved outdoors in a garden. Who’s is better?

Anyway, in the end our garage is fully cleaned out now and we can even park a car in it! We haven’t been able to do that since we moved in, so it’s a nice feeling. It’ll come in handy in the Winter. And being able to very easily get the lawn mower and snow blower out when needed will be great too. We do have a few small holes to patch up where those pesky freeloaders worked their way in though, definitely need to get those patched by Winter.