Clutter Wars Report

Here's the garage yesterday.  I'm sure it looks hopeless to most of you.  But I have to tell you that since August, we've gotten probably 50-60% of the stuff in the garage (by volume) out.  To anyone who was in the garage a year ago, this is an enormous improvement.  But this is also why I feel like for every bag of stuff we take to the thrift shop, throw out, or give away, it feels like two more reappear in the garage.

Here's just one of many car fulls of stuff headed for the nearby thrift shop.

  

And here's the line up waiting for Monday trash day.  Fortunately, my mom's neighbors don't fill up their garbage cans very much and they are more than happy to let me use them.  In LA, I found out that styrofoam and shredded paper can go in the recycling bin.  The latter if it's in a plastic bag so it doesn't fly all over when they dump it all into the truck.

And then there are all the interesting things we've been finding.  Some are treasures like my brothers old record albums.  These and a bunch of others have been in a box on an upper shelf in the back in the garage for probably almost 40 years.  I'm looking forward to getting them home to the turntable.  

And this chess table was stored in a box with the legs detached.  And yes, I've done some photoshopping with a few of the images in this post.  

Or this 1930 school photo of my step-father's class in Germany.  The photo is getting a little funky, but it's really sharp - at least in the original.  If you click the photo it will get bigger and sharper, but still not as good as the original.

This one is 13 years later after he's immigrated to the US and getting ready to go back to Europe, but this time in a US military uniform.  It says on the picture, in part,  "the 8th Medical Training Regiment in Camp Grant, Illinois, August 1943."  I could even find him in the picture.  This is a small portion of the long panorama shot and the sharpness in the original is amazing.  

I found other photos of his time in the army and letters commending him for his work.  Since he spoke fluent English, German, and French, I'm sure he was useful when the US got into France and then Germany.  

And then there are the stranger things like this bathrobe I found.  At least that's what I thought it was at first, though it seemed pretty heavy for a bathrobe.  Then I looked at the label.

It says:

COVERALLS, COOLING, ROCKET
FUEL HANDLER'S 

WEAR OVER COVERALLS, ROCKET FUEL
HANDLERS, VINYL COATED, TO PREVENT
OVERHEATING OF BODY.
DO NOT SHORTEN LEGS OR SLEEVES BY CUFFING.
KEEP SOAKED WITH WATER TO GET MAXIMUM
EVAPORATION FOR COOLING
PUT ON OVER PROTECTIVE FOOTWEAR.
IF CORROSIVE AGENTS ARE SPILLED OVER
SUIT GET UNDER SHOWER IMMEDIATELY.
USE LARGE QUANTITIES OF WATER, IF SUIT
IS DAMAGED EXCHANGE FOR NEW SUIT.
AFTER USING RINSE SUIT THOROUGHLY
AND HANG UP TO DRY.

I couldn't tell you how it got into my mom's garage.  I don't know of any rocket fuel handlers in the family.

We have Anchorage friends who will stay in the house for the next three months - they have a new grandchild who lives a few miles away and will play Mary Poppins for a while.  So we'll get as much done as we can in the next few days, and then tackle it again in the spring.