The cold northwest wind is finally subsiding and the legally regulated Memorial Day rains have fallen.  Trees are greening, the lawn is growing.  Now my thoughts are turning to bicycling, canoeing, hiking, camping – outdoor activities stressing the word “active”!  Pastimes which get me out, take me away from the everyday pressures of normal life; hobbies that lead me to semi-distant locales.

And the problem I now encounter stems from the fact that I have to retrieve this equipment from my garage.

Now, the garage is the universal home-owners catch-all.  Well, you park your car in it, if you have room, but face it; it catches the overflow.  It’s what I use for any piece of bric-a-brac too large to fit in that junk drawer in the house.  Historically, bric-a-brac, possibly a French word meaning, um, broken bricks, was kept out behind the garage – maybe.  After all, eventually a use would be found for the smaller pieces just like you’ll find a use for that box of textbooks from 1962 and that broken car fender mounted basketball backboard.

All through the winter, from maybe November until the kids can no longer find room for their bicycles, I take all of the broken, found, useless junk and place it in the garage.  This transfer is handled in a very precise and systematic manner.  What I normally do is – and of course, this depends on the size of the item – open the door and throw the object in.  Now the trick here is to get the door closed before the object lands somewhere.  When dealing with heavy objects you have to be really quick in order to get the door shut soon enough.  It’s kind of a game and it lasts until you eventually have to go in and clear the field.

An important part of building this game is your significant other.  My wife chooses what goes to the garage.  Oh, she doesn’t intend for these items to go directly to the garage.  Most of them, as a matter of fact, she thinks should go to the garbage, but either way, she’ll let me know what has to go.  Normally this is done using a non-verbal technique in which she stops in front of an item in the living room, looks at it for 23.7 seconds, glances around the room as if seeking a better place for it or maybe looking for the vandal who left it there, and then glares at me.  Verbal communication can usually be avoided if I remove the object after 3 or 4 of these exercises.  Those of you without wives should get one in order to play the game properly.  If you don’t have a wife, your garages are probably spotless – but then I’ve been in a lot of your living rooms and trust me, you need someone to help you play the game.

My biggest problem with cleaning the garage is not the labor involved – that’s part’s easy.  After all I have a teenager who wants money and permission to go to the movie.  The hardest part is the mental work – deciding what to do with all the valuable things you’ve been saving for the past year.  Things you know you’re going to need eventually.  When finally faced with the need, I usually approach this problem the same way I attack all household dilemmas…I get in the car and go for coffee.  When I finally come back, I will sort the items into three categories:  items to be sold, items to be saved and items to be tossed.  Obviously, if you first wanted to save some of this stuff, it must be good enough to sell, right?  So the determination must be made if someone will pay for an old portable stereo which is perfectly good except for the complex switching system which won’t allow you to turn the unit on in the first place.  The answer is, of course, no; but since you know the speakers and the cd unit still work, you’ll have to save it.  Eventually you’ll find that the “sell” and “throw” piles are minimal, at best, while the “save” pile appears to be a simple reorganization of the garage contents… you know, the contents you had intended to divest yourself of.  Eventually you spend the largest part of your time repeatedly going through these items until you have retained just enough “good stuff” to hide in the garage under the guise of “organization.”  This normally takes a whole weekend.

Like anything else, this situation can be averted or at least minimized by adding garage space, but if your neighbor won’t let you build on his lot, you’ll have to try one of these several options:

Probably the most popular method of dealing with the symptoms of junk-keepage is the addition of more storage area in the form of those little yard barns which aren’t actually big enough to hold domesticated farm animals.  I believe they were originated several centuries ago in an effort to salvage the career of an early American barnsmith with a very poor sense of proportion.

If you don’t have enough room in your yard for even a small additional building, you could possibly add a storage loft to your present garage.  Of course, while you’re building it you’ll have to find someplace for all that good stuff you’ve already got straddling the rafters.  For this purpose, you may wish to rent storage area in one of those complexes with the looooooong garages laid out in intricate patterns so as to form a maze in which you store your stuff, but then never again find the unit you had rented.  The folks who rent these things out know that – as a matter of fact, they designed and built them with that in mind.  I think they even shuffle the numbers once in a while to make sure you have difficulty finding the right door.  These are sharp business people.  They saw a niche and filled it.  They looked at the demographics, they calculated local statistics and they computed probable overhead and possible demand.  And, most importantly, they, too, had a problem with junk filling their garages so they know that you’ll come by two or three times, wander around looking for your unit and then go home.  They also know that since this is overflow junk, junk you really don’t need but can’t quite admit you really don’t need, you will probably forget all about it.  I believe what they do is keep an eye out for you for the first two months or so.  If you come by and half-heartedly look around for your unit, then go home without asking where it’s at, they back up a truck to the door, load your stuff and haul it out to the land fill.  No, that’s not true.  There’s no money in it. What they do is call a camera crew and auction off the unit’s content’s.  But that’s a different stupid story.

I have discovered the secret to an organized mind: LISTS.

Organized people make lists.  Lists of everything they deem important: grocery lists, chore lists, packing lists, to-do lists, invitation lists.  These people are meticu-list.  Ha!  (Sorry)

          And this is not a modern innovation.  Many important, influential people throughout history have used lists.  Archaeologists have found numerous examples, including:

                     Strudel for breakfast

                     Idea: have troops march with legs straight out

                     Birthday present for Ava

                     Invade Poland

          or:

                     Tax Jews

                     10:00am Yiddish lesson

                     Judge thieves

                     Judge Jesus

                     Wash hands

          or:

                     Thou shalt not steal.

                     Thou shalt not kill…etc.

          I have a friend who is a firm believer in the making of lists.  Curt makes lists for everything that comes to his mind that may, possibly, need to be done.  In this way he always knows what has already been done, what needs to be done now and what should be done in the future.  He has these bases covered…but then, my friend Curt is kind of spastic.  He’s always running in a minimum of three different directions at once and because of this he’s developed some nervous habits like always brushing the hair off of his forehead, constantly cleaning everything in sight and, on occasion, randomly shooting passers-by from the roofs of tall buildings.  Curt would have heart disease if not for the fact that it would interfere with his developing ulcer.  An “A” for personality type, I think.

          It’s not necessary, of course, for you to have this type of lifestyle in order to become a list-maker.  O, contraire, mon ami (literally: “I don’t think so, Tim!”).  As a matter of fact, if you are a laid-back, relaxed individual, you are probably more likely to benefit from the notation of necessities – something to help you recall that you should pick up your daughter from basketball rather than some beer from the liquor store.  As a responsible parent, your children should always come first on your list…unless you have time to pick up the beer without being late.

          Often, the simple act of making a list will help you recall what it is you wanted to remember.  This may have something to do with the fact that once you bring the idea to the forefront of your conscious thought, the tendency to recall the information is much greater.  For this reason, I will sometimes make a list and then throw it away, since the act of writing it out helps ensure that I will remember.  Also, in some instances, this can keep any embarrassing hard copies from being found.

Attorney for the plaintiff: “Mr. Simpson, this note, in your handwriting, was found under a magnet on your refrigerator several days after the murder in question.”

          Pick up knives from sharpeners’

          Tickets to Chicago

          Remember gloves in hall closet

“What do you have to say to that?”

          Attorney for the defense: “I OBJECT!”

          If you have no critical reason to throw your lists away, I would suggest you date them in some way.  This will keep you from using an old list, which you confused with the one you wrote yesterday.  I have, for example, found perfectly fresh looking lists in jacket pockets, which reminded me to stop for things no longer necessary.  In this way I have accumulated extra items such as several gallons of spoiling milk, a stockpile of toilet paper, a third car and an extra knee surgery, among other things.

          Some of these “found” lists are sure to be lists you made up and subsequently lost, which can happen if you become too prolific in the making of lists.  When this happens, you can grow dependent, needing to make a list or write down every little thing you wish to remember.  Eventually you’ll feel the need to begin new lists, even though you have one started at home…and at the office, and in the car.  Soon you’ll be spending all your time running, chasing, searching for lists you may have written; totally helpless to recall the reason for your hunt.  Your short term memory will fail to gel; you will be firmly hooked on the use of lists the same way you became hooked on the pocket calculator.  – Quick what’s 7 plus 9?  No!  Don’t reach for you calculator!  Just tell me the answer!  It’s second grade math, for goodness sake…you’re an educated person.  HA!  I see you using your fingers!  Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?  THINK!

          See what I mean?  The list is a tool, but one you cannot afford to become too dependent on.  Is it any wonder that the truly organized people in the world are, well, kind of odd?  I believe, if you went through the little personal day planners they all carry, you’d find, next to their antacid prescriptions, a map of all the taller buildings in town…preferably ones with flat roofs.

          So it comes down to a decision you have to make for yourself: Do you want to be an organized, successful, neurotic individual or do you want to remain a forgetful, semi-normal, neurotic schmuck like the rest of us?

          It is possible for you to find a middle ground – an area in which you can operate without becoming excessively paper bound.  For example, my ability to organize a day is exemplary and it’s not something I was born with or learned in a well-organized upbringing.  This is a skill I have developed with determination, tenaciousness and repeated practice…not to mention a certain amount of apathy.  What you need to do is first organize your day for tomorrow.  This can be done either mentally or on paper.  Then tomorrow, if you haven’t quite completed everything you had slated for the day, simply chronicle it as an aspect of the next day’s list.  After several years of this type of personal training you can index and organize a day without a second thought:

“Lunch?  Sure.  I can fit it in between my 11:45 aerobics class and my 1:30 meeting with the board…in Minneapolis.  No problem.”

          Of course, some of my scheduled activities have to wait.  I still have to get to a basketball game last Thursday night and I keep rescheduling the filing of my 1992 tax return, but my blood pressure is normal, I have very little stress and my dependence on lists is very low.

          By the way, if you’re interested in a copy of my organizational training plan, just send me a stamped, self-addressed envelope – I’ll put you on my list.

          Hey, look!  There goes a superbly organized person.  Over there, see?  That one.  The one with the day planner and the assault rifle.