Garage Physics

I know I'm lucky to have a garage. Many years I spent dashing from the car to an apartment door, groceries perched precariously in arms, during some deluge or other. But with age and comfort, I got soft. And now it's easy for me to complain about stuff like bikes not being nestled properly in the northeast-southwest orientation.

My current garage actually has enough room to park two vehicles, assorted bicycles, and lawn equipment - though seldom without a struggle.

Not good enough! When life is kind, we get greedy. So, I proclaimed one weekend, the garage should be CLEAN, NEAT, and ORGANIZED.

Stop laughing. That wasn't the punch line.

Anyway, there is this little law of universal physics (and I promise this will tie in later) called "The Law of Entropy." For those of you who have better things to do than study physics in your spare time, the Law of Entropy says that the universe constantly approaches a state of total disorder. Like a giant child's bedroom, or government.

And nowhere is the law of entropy more true than in a garage.

So, right from the start, I was pretty much bucking the laws of nature and the universe. This became apparent almost immediately, when I backed out the cars and attempted to sweep. Irritated at this bold display of hubris, Mother Nature kicked up a stiff breeze, and at the end of the hour, more leaves were inside the garage than when I started.

No matter. Modern science has blessed me with a bold invention: the leaf blower. And thus all other laws, universal or not, were superseded by the law of eye protection.

It's an interesting truism that once a garage floor has been divested of its protective layer of filth, one tends to notice all manner of oil and grease stains, and sometimes when one is very very stupid, one decides that concrete would look better without them.

This required the purchase of vile chemicals and epoxy paint, complete with 17 pages of instructions, and the rental of some strange piece of equipment that weighed more than I do.

Right there in the paint department, I realized that if I was going to paint the garage floor, the garage walls really needed some attention, too. And soon thereafter I discovered that if one is foolhardy enough to paint garage walls, she will surely notice that the ceiling looks like hell, as well.

Hence, I found myself with enough chemicals, paints, and supplies to require storage. But, after all, how much trouble could it be to install workshop cabinets?

Due to the copious amount of time it takes to assemble cabinets from a "kit" - a pile of boards and generous pile of little metal doo-dads (but no instructions) - one ends up spending some long-awaited quality time with the A/C furnace. Which one may never have noticed before, leaks, and has corroded not only its central nervous system, but also a goodly portion of drywall.

Drywall can be inconvenient to install, unless one has lots of elbowroom. Which, in this case, meant that this would probably be a good time to install wooden shelves against the entire southern wall of the garage - to get stuff up off of the floor and out of the way, and looking all organized. Preferably in matching labeled boxes. (Where's a psychotherapist when you need one?)

The most pressing issue associated with installing several thousand linear feet of shelving is whether to paint it the wall color, the floor color, or the trim color. The answer is usually: whichever you have run out of.

Proud of my handiwork so far, I realized that there were still half a dozen odd things that didn't fit on any of the shelves, or in any of the cabinets.

This called for the installation of additional wire shelving, in a myriad of lengths and widths for maximum confusion purposes. Next, I figured I should probably spackle the holes which resulted from the improper initial placement of abovementioned wire shelves.

The last holdout: the ladder. For most efficient use of space, I decided it should be mounted with pulleys and ropes, and snuggled neatly out of the way, against the ceiling. I also discovered at length, that the space beneath a hung ladder should only be occupied by things that don't accept bond-o or stitches.

Finally, I applied the floor paint in a simple 72-step process, which included such highlights as acid etching, and a fun little asphyxiation exercise that actually assisted the process by rendering me incapable of fleeing the scene.

And that was it. Except for hanging the dangly "you're in far enough" car-parking indicators (in this case, yellow tennis balls), a few throw pillows, and an inspirational piece of abstract art to cover the big hole that the ladder made when it fell off of its pulley system.

See, and it only took three months!

I'd carved out a niche of perfect order in my garage, thus pushing the Law of Entropy back 20 feet - into my house.