Flip That House
I’ll admit it. My garage has been in complete and utter disarray since I moved in two years ago. Big, empty moving boxes sat stacked no-so-neatly on top of each other. Scads of Christmas decorations packed next to boxes of useless treasures I couldn’t part with. Two lawn mowers. Dog food. Spilled dog food. Old possessions that never sold in a friend’s yard sale, that sat awaiting its own yard sale… which was never to happen.

I was ashamed to even open my garage door for the neighbors to see, sneaking out the Sunday night trash only under the safe cover of night. My old roommate and I talked about getting our act together and cleaning it out. But we always seemed to find something more pressing to do. It wasn’t that hard actually. Re-watching Bridget Jones’ Diary for the trillioneth time always seemed like a better idea than tackling the garage. After all, it’s been that way for X amount of months. What’s another week/month/year?

I like to clean in 15-30 minute increments. Squeezed in between other things, you barely recognize it was even part of the day. Somehow, things seem to mostly stay in order that way (at least the visible parts), without setting aside an entire half a day to do it all at once. But this was no 30 minute task. In fact, such chores taking up an entire afternoon is the exact image of suburbia that I dreaded as a kid. It seems you could easily fill up those precious weekend afternoons spent at home with a myriad of never-ending chores. And to me that’s all the average American family seemed to do – chores. What a way to spend your life.

And now, my roommate is my husband. Not that he’s significantly more motivated than my old roommate (or myself for that matter), but this relationship carries with it a little more of the burden of shared responsibility. (Plus, watching TV now looks a lot less like a common interest in a Bridget Jones DVD and more like a power struggle over whether we’re going to watch Planet Earth on the Discovery Channel or Run’s House on MTV .) Now that it’s nice out, we both knew it could be ignored no longer. It was time to meet the beast head-on.

What a suprisingly enjoyable way to spend a gorgeous afternoon. It was cathartic, fun, active and productive. Talk about instant gratification. An eye sore which plagued me with guilt for almost two years, now in one short afternoon has become an organized place of tranquility and peace in our home. Deep breath. Ahhhhhhh.

Yeah, yeah, I know it’s still just a garage. Leave me alone.

I think the sense of relief and pride can be summed up in one short conversation on the way home from church later that night.

I broke the thoughtful quiet as we pulled onto our street.
Me: (Feeling somewhat guilty) During the sermon, were you thinking about how our clean garage is?
Husband: Yeah. (Pause) And I was planning out how to aerate the lawn.

There you have it people. Childhood fears, no more. Weekend chores so satisfying, they’re the stuff of daydreams.