Garage Wars

It's funny how much stuff one can collect in a couple of years. What's worse is when you have siblings that help you along the way. Our garage has been the family storage place for more than 12 years.

Most people can relate. Human beings have a tendency to accumulate and hoard stuff. Granted, I know plenty of disciplined minimalists. People who manage to keep their house looking like a Japanese garden; the ones with two rocks and 20 square feet of nothing. That's not our family.

I have seen some amazingly useless and worthless items in our garage. But someone thinks it might be needed one day. Like this old 1970s microwave. It's huge, about the size of a small refrigerator. It looks like a remnant from the Cold War, and it surely doesn't work. It's all dented and dirty, but one day it might be needed. Sure. Give me a break. Why can't we just throw it away?

In our garage there are boxes of items that have not been seen for seven to ten years. If you haven't needed it for more than a year you don't need it; get rid of the fucking thing. Please!

So when we decided to get our Nissan Leaf Yoli and I started to dread the day we would have to ask our "storage partners" to get their stuff out of the garage to make space for our electric car.

Well, the day has finally arrived. We have a new electric Nissan Leaf.

You have to see this garage - it is full to the brim. We would have to get rid of a lot of stuff, if we were going to fit the Leaf in this garage.  Luckily there was a wonderful solution.

No, not a thermo-nuclear device. The two old jet-skis that hadn't been used in about ten years. These two fun water-born thrill machines take up about as much room as a 2011 Nissan Leaf!!

About a year or so ago, when we reserved our Leaf, we had asked around to all who would listen about these jet-skis. Yoli's godparent's son Hector Macedo had shown interest. He told us he would be glad to take them and fix them up and that we would always have access to them if we wanted to jet-ski in the future. So we told Tere, Yoli's oldest sister and the owner of the two jet-skis.  She showed a bit of resistance so we decided we would wait to the last minute then try again when we finally got the Leaf.

Last week when they called us from North Bay Nissan to tell us that our car had arrived from Japan, I called Hector. He said,"I'll come over right away..." This afternoon the jet-skis are in Hector's possession, and finally out of the garage. We haven't told Tere.

Hooray. Hallelujah. Whoopee, yay, yippee and every other stupid exclamation you can think of. It fits - the Nissan Leaf fits. A little tight, but it fits.

The Leaf - finally in the garage

In the picture you'll see an old style Maytag washing machine. It's been in the family for decades. I think we better keep it. 

You never know when we might need it...