Our garage. It is a turmoil of stuff – stuff we need, stuff we don’t need, stuff we don’t even know we have and don’t need (or do we?).  Plainly, just too much stuff if you ask me. If you ask Husband, however, you will get a different answer. So the garage has become our blind spot, or rather the elephant in the room wearing a festive party hat and sipping on pink lemonade in an effort to look pleasant and fit in. I don’t like the elephant.

My main task was twofold: reorganize our holiday/seasonal boxes and eliminate/combine boxes of like items to make more room.

I unearthed a box of antiques. The box had a big footprint and would make for some nice open space if only I could incorporate what was in that box into our lives.

An old box found at my parents house. Apparently it was in one of the barns on the property when they bought the house in 1967.

I put an old picture of my dad, a hawk feather, and a pair of his old work gloves in the box that so reminds me of my dad.

Undated Coke bottles, each from a different state.

The four larger bottles had printed on them a city and state. I put them up on our slightly crowded mantle.

I had to text my mom a picture of this to find out what it was.

The potato ricer fits right in with the old butter churns that sit on either side of our fireplace, churns my grandmother used to make butter on the farm. You never know when you’ll find yourself in a position where you suddenly need to rice a potato or churn some butter.

Heavy duty meat grinder – this sucker is heavy!

I thought the meat grinder would look nice clamped to the side of the mantle, but I fear the mantle would crumble under the grip of the clamp and weight of the grinder. Plus Husband worried that I might get all Carole Baskin on him the next time the topic of our garage came up. This gem is still in said garage.

Oh, how does one even go about writing a caption for this?

While navigating my way around and through boxes, I tripped and my foot came down on something plastic. There was a crunch and immediately the garage filled with the smell of the early 90’s. Not an antique nor a relic, but somehow this item deserved a mention in this commentary of mine.

The holiday/seasonal boxes have been tidied and there is a bit more wiggle room in our garage. The aroma of a bygone era still lingering in the air.