Holidays are Coming!

...and now we move into the holiday season when the garage explodes with lights, papers, boxes, and all the tools necessary for interior and exterior decorating, gifting, and secret-keeping. The garage becomes a staging area for the drama that goes into hosting family members from around the country. I don't have the heart to post a picture of the disaster that is my current garage. Let's just say I look forward to continuing my Huff, Puff, Sort & Sift efforts in the new year when all endeavors feel fresh with new energy!

Holiday Greetings!

Harvesting season

Life in the garage was going stridently well. The center floor was just a handful of items away from being clearned. Then, as is wont to happen in many households, the holidays happened. The garage exploded with all the Christmas bins dragged out and opened. The labeling made everything go a lot smoother than it normally would have, and almost all the bins were replaced once their contents were accessed.

The re-cluttering happened when the gourd harvest came in from a local farm. My garage has become home to 6 laundry baskets of egg gourds and miniature pear gourds. And, as if that weren't enough, the state gourd chapter belongings from the annual festival landed in the garage: banners, workshop wooden signs cemented in buckets, hanging snake gourd ceiling ornaments, and of course, the 2-car chapter tent.

Ironic there's a tent in the garage large enough to house 2 cars, and there's no room to put my car in the garage.

**sigh*

Season by season...

Umbrellas, signs, baskets, and display
metalwork is what makes up
the farm market area.

More and more there's order, but moving through the seasons
ensures that some things will always be in use
since I am now down to items we USE and just store.

Now that the farm market season is over, the 'market area' can be arranged and clearned so I can move on to another area. That will be the goal for tomorrow, Tuesday night. Today, is jam-making night -- the jars have been hauled to the kitchen and old jars I don't plan to use or keep have been given to the handyman who makes jalapeno jelly. Moving the jars made an empty shelf!  OH mY!!

Clearning and Re-clearning

Let me share with you a life wisdom; something you may have only suspected but now I give you proof that the phenomena known as 'the re-do' actually exists -- metaphysically speaking. In fact, there is probably a scientific term for it but I think 'the re-do' is all that's needed because...

...I keep re-doing the same clearning, over and over!

I keep buying more bins, re-organizing stuff into different bins, RE-directing found stuff into different bins, unearthing stuff I forgot I had, and trying my darnedest to keep people's stuff at bay. At one point last week I was at the point where I could see floor, and had SWEPT the autumn leaves that had blown into the open garage back out the garage door. However, the handyman has temporary stuff, people living in my house have temporary stuff, and of course there is my own temporary stuff. I just came through the state gourd festival, so now there are additional gourds to store for the new projects to come this winter. That's the problem with having hands-on interests -- there are materials to acquire and use to produce the final projects. **sigh*

This is what I now know: the re-do phenomena is not a problem, it is a perspective issue because now I believe it's just the way garages work.  After the trash and debris is deleted, stuff in a garage is useful and gets used. Everything is not used every single day, but periodically materials get used and need to be put back in place. So, figuring out where to put things, while the process of using materials is happening is what the phenomena of "the re-do" is all about.

In my garage, there is the spring gourd cleaning and crafting, the fall is the gourd festival, all summer is the farm market season when the tables and baskets are used, then of course there's the seasonal decorating for Halloween, Christmas, Valentine's Day, and Easter. Back to 'the zone concept' of areas allotted to different activities.

Clearning

This is my new word: clearning.  A combination of clearing and cleaning, clearning is the perfect piece of jargon to explain what is happening in my garage. I clear, I clean.

Another trip to the Hospice Thrift Store cleared another pile of stuff that is unwanted or far removed from ever being used again -- someone else is bound to need it all. Sweeping and dusting is cleaning the construction dust and autumn leaves from surfaces and the floor.

Clearning, it should be added to the American lexicon.

Not a Living Space

OK, so my garage is not a living space or can accommodate a living activity like sitting with friends and working on a project together. What was cleared out is now filled again with construction debris from a bathroom project from the upstairs. As you can see the handyman has his equipment and supplies in the garage, as well as the bathroom cabinet and, yes, the toilet. In the far back of the garage is the frantic activity of preparing for an art show next weekend at the Virginia Gourd Festival: woodburning gourds and varnishing the finished ones.

No one said clearning (my new word for clearing and cleaning) out the garage was going to be easy, especially when the garage is used as a holding tank for big projects. I wonder if this how it is with most people?

Survey Results - II

Another interesting aspect of the survey came from the question about what is the hardest part about keeping a garage tidy. Not having adequate storage seemed to be the biggest concern at 33% of the respondents. Not putting things back where they were retrieved (16%) was important, and makes sense I suppose. I have found myself having to remember to put things back into the labeled bins I have just organized.

I was surprised that although 6% said time was an issue, 20% stated a garage is dirty with bugs, car oil, dirt, and requires working in a dirty area.

So, having someplace to put stuff, remembering to return items to the places that exist, and working in a dirt space keeps people from keeping their garages tidy and usable.  What if a garage were treated as a living space? Would it then be more apt to be in regular order?

Survey Results

It is interesting to look at the results of a recent survey done among teachers and students at two middle schools. Of the 181 respondents, 48% believed a garage is for keeping a car or vehicle, 19% said a garage is for storage, and 33% responded that a garage is for a vehicle and storage.

These numbers are misleading because in a twisted turn of information, the next question of what the respondents use their garage for tells a different story! Of the 48% who said garages were for cars/vehicles only, 44% said they used their garage for cars AND storage. If this information is combined with the 19% who said, up-front, that a garage is for cars and storage, it would bring that total up to 40%!

I can only conclude that what people believe in theory and what they do in practice are two different things!

Garage Survey - Public Opinion

In taking a moment or two to re-group, I find my information falls into categories:

I Garage: history, uses, innovations
II Reasons for collecting and storing materials: hoarding, scarcity mentality, delayed action (do it later)
III Perception of time when persevering with organization
IV Trends and opinions of general public about organizing garages

I have prepared a survey for the public to take regarding garages and organization. I wonder what others think about garages, cleared spaces, and the importance of achieving an organized area. Feel free to take the survey yourself!

The Huff and Puff Part...

The huff and puff part of this project has started in earnest! The biggest pieces of stuff that has collected in the middle of the garage as I move around the perimeter now has be handled. Either I move it somewhere where it all has purpose, or store it elsewhere (another collection of stuff somewhere?) or delete it somehow. How does one get rid of the last vestiges of stuff that has value, to someone?  The guilt of taking good stuff to the landfill is big...it's bad environmentally of course, and I'll wonder who could have used this stuff that otherwise might not have been able to afford to buy new?

There is a Hospice Thrift store a few blocks from me. They now know me by name for all the stuff I have taken there this summer and fall. One guy sees me back my car up and runs out to open the trunk! Lovely fellow-I appreciate his willingness to help tote stuff into the collection room.

Re-sorting bins...

It's so funny, I just have to laugh. Every time I open a bin, box, or bag of stuff for sifting and sorting, I locate old projects and repeats of the tools I used to generate it. The same model of woodburner, and glues, and Sharpees, and tapes. It is obvious I have favorite materials because when I do something and can't find what I need, I buy the same supplies.

Now, the original bins for the repetitive stuff have to be exchanged for bigger ones, or expand into duplicate bins. The extension cord bin is now 3 bins, and the woodburner bin is on the verge of being 2. I could teach classes with the amount of supplies I have! So, what was considered almost done is now just plodding along, exchanging bins for bins so the same labeling system stays intact and the bins are manageable and not overly full.

And They Make 'Em!!

Yessirree bobbie, garage turntables exist and are used in tight driveway places where someone can't turn a car around or where it isn't safe to back out of a driveway! As you can see, this car has a steep, narrow driveway and YIKES! to back out of there would make anyone's heart skip a beat.

In this picture it appears the garage is at a right angle from the driveway, so the turntable positions the car to pull in then when the owner leaves and backs out onto the turntable can be positioned to pull down the driveway into traffic with a clear view of traffic.

I'm not going to install a turntable in the present house, but there's always hope for a future abode!

What Is A Garage, Anyway?

Alan Moore explains that garages evolved with the automobile, especially as automobiles became a prominent part of American lives. Initially, they had to be large because cars did not have reverse gears so the structures had turntables -- can you imagine!  What a cool thing that would be now! Then I could always pull into and out of the space without looking behind me. Super good, and really keen!

The early garages were modified structures from other uses to accommodate the automobile. Although interior details have changed to include garage door openers, lighting, shelving, doors into the house, the garage itself has not changed much since the mid-1950s. It's a shame in a way, wouldn't you want a turntable in your garage?

Different Garages, Similar Stuff

In a moment of rest, I did what I thought would be a quick Google-y search for cluttered garages using various keywords: messy, cluttered, decluttering, and chaotic. By golly, looking at all the messy, cluttered, decluttering projects I began see strong similarities. In fact, several times I had to do a double-take because I thought I was looking at my own garage back when I first started this adventure.

More often than not there was the big plastic blue bins, a shop vac, cardboard boxes, suitcases, extension cords, posters on the wall, and metal shelving. Stuff balanced on top of other stuff. I have balanced stuff forever, and it was gratifying in a strange way to see that other people do this too, probably walking around towers of belongings hoping not to topple anything. My only conclusion is humanity needs basic stuff to live the day-to-day lives of adults, with or without families in tow with a parallel conclusion that many people just don't know what to do with the stuff they need and can't do without. This is not hoarding, which is irrational collecting, but bewilderment. What to do?

The pictures of Past Projects of A Good Sort are inspiring though. This area of A Good Sort, an organizing company owned and operated by Olwen Turtle, is nothing more than before and after pictures of areas in the home where clutter was organized and bettered. The garage went from piles to order. Take a look at the other images on the site. The junk drawer is a particular study in organization.

Is professional organizing necessary? At what point do people cross the line into needing professional help? I suspect everyone has their own line in the sand and when anything goes too far will rear up and do something they wouldn't normally do in other

circumstances. Animals will attack when backed into a corner.  I have tripped over the stuff in my garage and fallen face first into a pile of easels. I have lost woodburners needed to complete projects making me purchase new ones only to find the others later (which is now why I have a BIN full of woodburners!). I found the spilled can paint so old it had dried solid. What was excuse? I was busy; I was working on a new Master's degree; I was waiting to add onto the house; I....I..I...who knows why I waited to start this process. At some point, I backed into a corner of some kind and decided to attack.

A Houston Garage -- the dream!

Another solution for garage messiness is evident in this Houston garage. A quote from the Industrial Shelving folks gets right to the heart of garage-ness: "Getting to the point where your garage is organized and can function as a space for your car is what you are aiming for when you opt to choose from the various garage storage solutions in the market."

Put the car IN the garage?!  There's a concept!

What, More Stuff!?

Remember the cleared space along one of the walls? Today, I am surprised by the delivery of a desk that had sentimental memories...right into the cleared space. **sigh*  To add an additional twinge of pain, the desk is broken and has to be repaired. **double sigh*

Another project...

Peeling it up...

Initial scraping did not get the paint blob up, and boy have I been regretting my blinded ways to have allowed such a spill to occur in the first place. I have been walking right past this mess for years since it is right at the garage door!

Luckily, the kind fellow who is currently rebuilding our staircases took pity on me and gave me a chisel. He said that, since it is latex paint, I could pick an edge of it enough to curl back enough of it to grab. It should come off in one peeling motion.

And it did, paint can lid and all! What's the German word for that?  There's a word for when something happens that seemed counter-intuitive, but what is it?

Oops!

...and here is a prime example why good lighting is so important!

In the corner, between one of the cabinets and the drill press is a white blob of spilled paint that has been there so long the can was stuck to the hard mess as an angled sculpture rising out of the whiteness. The lid embedded in the dried paint.. I pried off the can and will need to chip the paint off the cement floor.

Light is filling the dark corners of my garage and my mind!

Let There Be Light!

The new lights have been installed and a new point of view is illuminated!  The bright light makes everything appear clear. I am ready to spend time in the garage and finish up the last bits of organizing!

Everything is so bright and illuminated!

Garage Enigma

While waiting for the lights to be installed in the garage, I came across this quote: “Surrounded by darkness yet enfolded in light” ― Alan Brennert. Found on GoodReads, a quote website, it intrigued me.

Surrounded by darkness yet enfolded in the light - what a circle of thinking. In the garage and studios spaces in which I am trying to make order, there can be both darkness and light on many levels. The disorganization is a darkness if I take it as a jumbled up mess into the dark side, and yet I am enfolded in the light of orderly achievement as things get put away. The garage can be a darkness of unknown, where the detritus of living accumulates, hoping for a future. The garage is just dark, even with the light bulb switched on it can seem dark because the light is always at my back and my shadow falls on whatever I am doing.

A single bulb in a dark room.

Lighting in Dark Spaces

It seems that the darker spaces in the garage have the most clutter! All this time, I've been working in the garage with the door open so there was plenty of natural light...and I could sort and sift with no problem. Lately, however, the days have been rainy and the fall season is gobbling up sunlight so the days get shorter and cooler necessitating a closed garage door. There is a single incandescent bulb in the middle of the garage so no matter where I work, my own shadow falls on the area I am trying to clear.

 As the blog, Twisted Shifter, shows so well, light can play strange and hallucinatious (is that a word?) visual tricks. Shadows and reflections can make appear what is not there, and delete from view what clearly exists. The poor lighting in the garage has slowed down the evening work which is done after the sun goes down. there are dark spaces where objects disappear.

Tomorrow a genlteman installs lighting at the ceiling on the interior wall side of the garage. Since that is the area where the 'workshop' will be, it is the area I am most concerned about. This fixture from Lowe's, the Utilitech ceiling flourescent should fix things handily! One will be 4 feet long and one will be 2 feet.

A Place for Everything

Benjamin Franklin is said to have said "A place for everything and everything in its place" but so is Samuel Smiles and Isabella Beeton, among other references in early stories according to The Phrase Finder.

Limited furniture, massive storage...that's the Shaker way!

With that in mind, there are many ideas available for organizing minds to make order of the various pieces of life. Pinterest shows a WIDE array of solutions some more decorative than functional. The problem with creative ideas is that a person needs to have a plan in place for storage solutions before the furniture is in place. Many of the files, drawers, and cabinets pictured in the polished, well-organized magazine would be hard to put to use once a household is in full swing.

You know who were the conquerors of clutter?  The Shakers!  I dream of building from the ground up and right from the beginning have floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall, drawers and cabinets like the image below. I have a couple rooms with that concept now, but to have a whole house and studio with everything put away behind labeled doors and drawers. Pretty brass cardholders would be a lovely and yet subtle way to identify contents in a series of  cabinets. Wow!  The motherload of happiness!

An original Shaker wall of cabintry.

Sharon, at Morning's Minion blog, describes a visit to South Union Village, a Shaker museum, where furniture and construction could be examined. She says the Shakers were among the first to have 'fitted kitchen cabinetry'. The simplicity is exquisite. The Shakers were the masters of decluttering!

Bells of Sarna

A stroke of luck was the re-discovery of the Bells of Sarna I was given by my mother-in-law. A wedding gift to her, the bells have a distinctive, cheery sound. Now when I go through the garage door, the bells announce entry...and, that something else has been stored properly in my ongoing adventure of Sort & Sift, Huff & Puff!

It's an interesting story, the Bells of Sarna. Briefly, Sajjan Singh Sarna came to America in 1929 and, being a creative salesman, discovered Americans like handcrafted treasures from exotic places like his homeland of India. In 1938 he had a dream about a cow bell ringing and floating in the air. This led to buying lots of handcrafted items including bells to sell and then creating a brand for his treasures: The Bells of Sarna. He named each bell and attached a story tag about the bell’s purpose and history in India. It didn't matter if the bells were new or antique, or what they were made of, the elephant, cow, and whatever other kinds of bells he had of every size and shape sold quickly.

So now, I have some Bells of Sarna with a family story behind them. I like that they were wedding bells. I also like that they are handcrafted and remind me that all these bins and segregated items of artistic nature are the stepping stones to creating handcrafted items of my own to sell. It makes me feel like I'm part of something much bigger than myself and my own pursuits.

Geez, now I need a new garage door. Those Bells of Sarna make me realize how beat up that door has gotten in the last 20 years!  Yikes!

Back Wall Table and Shelves

Remember how those back wall shelves looked like? (See picture to the left.) There was stuff piled up on the shelves, but in front too. In fact, there was a delicate balancing act happening. Now there is some order and I can actually put bins of paint on the table at the first level. There's still some small items in front, namely some rose petal jelly I forgot I made, but I can now get to the book press where I am pressing bleeding heart flowers for a greeting card project. (That's the black hand-cranked object in the lower left-hand side of the picture.) I pressed them last May before all the hubbub began, so those flower are ready to make into cards! 

Multi-drawer Units Almost Filled

Get a look at all the minutes little bits and pieces I've organized and put into drawers! I feel like a squirrel hiding nuts!

There are still a few empty compartments but I'm sure those will get filled soon enough!

An Open Path!

OK, there is an open path from the front to the back of the garage which makes everything look much more hopeful. Here is the garage at the beginning and the garage with the new path. THAT's how much sorting and sifting has happened!

A lot of stuff is now in bins on the black shelving units; some of it belonged in the shed; some of the clutter was actually materials that went to the landfill. There was a wrenching feeling to throw things out because I could envision use of the stuff for recycling art but, honestly, when am I going to have time to make recycled art?

You will see that as I find things that go into labeled bins, I place them on the bin's lid so that when I circle back I can open the lids and tuck stuff inside. Eventually, all the shelves will look like the one at the top.

A Minor Victory & A Decision Made

I had a minor victory last weekend when I was asked if I had a measuring tape. I walked over to one area of storage bins and put my hands on three different sizes...immediately, without shuffling or moving anything. I could just put my hands right on them. When finished, I put the one that was chosen right back where it belongs. According to Eileen Roth in a brief article called Get Organized to Save Time and Money = Enjoy Your Life, “Your future success will be determined more by your being organized than by any other single action you take.”  

I can already tell that by organizing, I'll save money by re-purchasing supplies and equipment I use frequently but cannot locate when I need them.

One casualty however, remember the bird's nest I didn't know what to do with? In the shuffle to sort items off the top of one of the workbenches, the bird's nest was knocked to the ground, ripped apart, and the egg broken. The interior was dehydrated. So, that pretty answered what to do...it ended up in the trash.

In the end I am left to wonder: if a person makes no decision, does time and circumstances make the decisions? That seems to be the case in this instance. It makes me wonder how many people let events around them make choices that could be made personally?  How often to people abdicate the responsibility of deciding?

Busy Weekend in the Garage

This weekend was busy in the garage. I now have paths, and labeled bins, and sadly MORE PILES of stuff! It seems the more I clear, the more I unearth. It was getting discouraging yesterday until I realized I was beginning to find stuff and knew exactly where it was supposed to go!  Amazing! So now, I have reached a point where there are enough places to storage items (remember, lack of storage was one of the big three problems of clutter!), that bits and pieces can be grouped into labeled bins.

This has led to multiples of some supplies, so I can stop spending money in the local stores' craft aisles. THAT will be money in my pocket...kind of like found money!

There's been a fair amount of change found in boxes
and jars and gourds.

Taking a Break from the Garage...

...into one of the studios. The picture looks like chaos, but all of the stuff is valuable and will be put to good use! When the sliding glass doors were taken out and the french doors put in, everything had to shift from one side of the room to the other, with some moving into the hallway. It was all a rush and what to do but empty drawers and the closets and pile stuff up.



This is overwhelming.

Perceiving Time

One thing has happened which I did not expect was the change of time perception. I can do household chores, or read, and time moves by at a pace I expect. However, I can work in the garage sifting and sorting all the items of art projects, gardening needs, and printing materials and time escapes me! Lots and lots of time just passes me by without me knowing. I am always stunned at the hour when I finally sit down for a review...and still it looks like there is so much more to do!

What makes the perception of time so warped? An article by Juliana Breines, How to Make Time Stand Still, explains that a sense of awe can make time stand still. Am I in awe of the stuff in my garage?!  I definitely have been surprised to unearth stuff I forgot I had! It is a little like every time I tackle a new pile, something interesting comes to life...and those instances have been happy times.  But, awe-inspiring? MmmMmmmm, I"m not so sure.

Lack of...

...so which is it for this old garage and studio cleaner/organizer?  Lack of time? Lack of motivation?  Or lack of storage solutions?

I have the motivation, or so I think. I have house guests visiting in October and this needs to be done by then. The first set arrive Oct. 2, and the next set come on Columbus weekend. I need some order before then if only to save face!


Storage solutions?  I went to my local store and bought 6 more bins this week, and am labeling them ahead of time so as I find things, the items go directly into them. I've cleared a shelf or two to make room immediately so bins are not just sitting around.

I am also making use of the 'unsure what to do' box so no time is wasted mulling things over, over, and over....

...which brings me to time. That's the issue it seems. This all takes time and with a job and other household and yard duties, where to find the time. Chopping the after-school hours into pre-designated times will probably be best...allowing 1-2 hour a day to the project and that's all. In the end, time will be spent in small but consistent chunks. Consistency, that's what matters. I wonder if there is research that proves such a point.

See Value 2 -- More Thoughts on Previous Post

Each of these situations (lack of time, motivation, and storage solutions) would clearly define what's happened in my garage and studios. Once the summer construction was done, there was all the things to put back and since the spaces are now redefined, where should it all go?  There was so much! At first, get like stuff together then arrange for bins or boxes. I have similar stuff in several places. For example, I now have a pile woodburners and every time I find another one I add it to the pile. The same goes for scissors, fishing lures, paper clamps, bottles of Mod Podge.  I've had to resort bins I've already had sorted because I keep finding MORE of what I've already sorted and put into bins.

The bottles of paint to the left began as one bin, but I kept finding more and more corners of paint bottles so that they could not fit into one bin, so they have been divided into two bins now: one for large bottles and one for small bottles.








Last week, there was a bin of tape and glue, all sorts of both: Elmers, E6000, glue sticks, fabric glue, Modge Podge, painters tape, duct tape, double-sided tape, Magic tape, etc.  You get the point. I kept finding duplicates and triplicates of the same thing as you can see. That bin had to be split as well.

Seeing Value

In reflecting about hoarding and keeping stuff for later use (which is messy), I wonder where is the line between the two?  Hoarding is the unconscious need to keep things for no apparent reason. I have reason to keep what I have!  There's is just so much of it, and so many types of it. All piled up it becomes a mess.

A mess is stuff not put away, right? Caitlyn of Cluttercubed posted on Clutterbrain saying messes are a matter of not putting things away but a matter of:
lack of time,
lack of motivation, and
uncertainty of proper storage.

Progress in Spits and Spurts

There seems to be progress in little pieces right now. Now that some bins are labeled and being filled, the debris is being sifted. Little by little, the pieces of old and unfinished projects are being located in the piles of stuff and are sorted into the bins. What began as complete chaos is only extremely messy now.

Little Stuff

What about the little stuff?  That's what I am working down to as I clear the workbench. There are little piles of things I want to keep and use, but to isolate each into it's own bin, or Ziplock container, is a waste of space. What to do with fishing spinners? of papercutting hangers? of gourd bits and pieces I use to make tiny gourd animals? In the picture to the left (clockwise from the black lid) gourd pieces of gourds, business cards, papercuting hangers, (above cards) jewelry pin backs, erasers, ink pad next to glue sticks, bird nest on top of my on's Aylor Middle School football picture, fishing spinners, paper clamps, and blank seed envelops.

What to do with the bird nest, complete with an egg, I found on the lawn last spring?  I'm not sure what I can do with that, or who I can give it to...but throwing out seems morally wrong somehow.

Two Truths of Search Engines

Search engines have programs called spiders that go out onto the web and bring back website addresses. When a person does a search using a search engine, the only results that can be offered are the addresses the search engine has collected. Also, the only results that be offered are based on how the search engine interpreted the search words a person chose to use. Since all search engines have varying results, a "No results found." notice in response to a search from one search engine does not mean there would no results in other search engines.

Two truths of search engines?

1. Search engines only give what they got.

2. Search engines only give what they think you want.

This applies to my garage! It only gives me what it's got inside it. Unfortunately, when I'm searching for stuff in my garage, it will only present to me what it thinks I'm looking for. Of course, this second bit is kind of my own issue since I can think I'm looking for a blue box with a circle on it and when I finally find it, the box was actually green and had a square image on the lid!

Bins with Labels

The bins are being started.

Stuff is being sorted into bins and labeled with index cards. On the seasonal side of the garage, I am using the colored bins. The labels are helpful because I cannot see into the bin without opening it, even when using the translucent ones. It seems the bin material needs to be absolutely clear to see through it.  I'm not storing junk or trash or any other unnecessary debris a hoarder would keep. Unlike a hoarder, this is stuff I will use from time to time in one artistic endeavor or other: gourd art, the gourd state chapter's annual festival, papercutting art, or home seasonal upkeep and decoration.

Workbench bins.

On the other side of the garage, at the workbench area, the bins are more transparent. The labels are still on the end of the bin, but I can more easily identify what is inside them. Clealry, I am still sorting through detritus so as I find things they are place on top of the corresponding bin. I will put stuff into the bin as I work through the workbench.

Bugs and Cardboard

Cardboard boxes were going to be some of my storage solutions, but once I visited the Spectrum Health website about cardboard boxes, Always Bee Ready, I changed my mind. Bugs can crawl into the corrugated portion of the cardboard walls and lay eggs. Gross!  Better to use plastic bins.

Active Voice in the Garage

Clearing, sifting and sorting...that's the garage activity this week. In the research classroom, we talk about active voice which is a style of writing researchers do that is direct and to the point. There is little to no elaboration when using active voice.

Examples of active voice would be

I organized items from the seasonal area of the garage into plastic bins.

The same sentence put into passive voice would be

The plastic bins were filled with items from the seasonal area of the garage by me.

Phew!!  What a long way to say the direct message that I put stuff into bins!

Active voice does not use 'you' and rarely uses the word 'that'. Direct and to the point, that is the whole idea behind active voice.

APA vs. MLA formats

Papers are written with different audiences in mind, and therefore use different organizing formats to reflect purposes.

MLA, Modern Language Association, is a format used in the humanities to stress authorship. In the citation, the author's first and last names are shown in full. Also, the bibliography page is called Works Cited.

APA, American Psychological Association, on the other hand, is a format used in the sciences to stress the date a work was created...it is date driven. Researchers use APA because they are building on the most recent information possible. The citation will show the author's last name and first initial of their first name, and date. The bibliography page is call References.

Examples for this blog about clearing out my garage and studios:

APA -- Greenberg, M. (2014, January 16). The Psychology of Scarcity. Psychology Today. Retrieved September 1, 2014 from http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-mindful-self-express /201401/the-psychology-scarcity.

MLA -- Greenberg, Melanie. "The Psychology of Scarcity." Psychology Today. 16 Jan. 2014. Web. 1 Sept. 2014. <http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-mindful-self-express /201401/the-psychology -scarcity>.

Notice how the date moves from a place of prominence in the APA citation version to after the publisher's name in the MLA version.

In-text Citation of Paraphrasing

Paraphrasing can be cited within the text as a quick guide to the reader about where to find the source of the information on the reference page...a like a mini-citation.  It can be done in two ways: referenced and embedded.

Referenced in-text citation (also called parenthetical citing) is listing the source's author and year right after the paraphrasing, but before the period of the sentence:

Deprivation of resources can lead to obsessing about the resources thought of as scarce (Greenberg, 2014).

The same paraphrasing can be done with an embedded in-text citation by making the author's name part of the sentence structure followed by the year in parenthesis:

According to Greenberg (2014), deprivation of resources can lead to obsessing about the resources thought of as scarce.

Hoarding vs. Keeping

Words can be long reaching in their meanings. To my mind, hoarding implies nonsensical collecting and storing anything with no purpose, whereas keeping would suggest there is a purpose, right?  The difference seems to be whether what is being kept has future value or purpose enough to justify the storage space.

An article in Psychology Today, Your Trash, My Treasure, suggests the act of hoarding and deciding what to keep depends on the prefrontal cortex of the brain. Damage to this area can mess with a person's ability to make judgments about what to keep and what not to keep. That would explain sudden hoarding after a brain injury, but what about other hoarding when there is no brain injury? The publication has a recent article, The Psychology of Scarcity, that says people will hoard what they have been deprived of in their lives.

My garage? There is no mindless hoarding of purposeless stuff. Everything has a definite purpose against future projects. I have no brain damage (well, some would dispute that), I am clearly aware of my plans for various items piled up in different areas. My situation seems to be one of organization and putting things in order for easy access.

I need an organizational plan.

Making Notes for this project

Making notes (as opposed to taking notes, which implies plagiarism) is a system of coding a source to all the corresponding notes made from that source. For example, I find a worthwhile source about organizing a garage so I give it a code of X. The notes made from the X source are numbered X1, X2, X3, and so on. That way I stay organized and avoid plagiarism....the 2 reasons for coding sources to notes.

Sifting through the stuff...

Sifting through the stuff last night, I find there are main categories of materials in the garage:

1) materials for a state nonprofit group for which I am an officer 

2) materials for my personal gourd art fascination

3) toys and belongings for my son who is now grown and lives in Columbus, Ohio

4) materials for family gatherings and celebrations (ice chests, holiday decorations, tools)

5) pantry supplies of canned goods and cooking materials

Gathering materials by category into zones may be a good place to start this process of organizing. The back right hand corner tends to be the gourd art space, whereas the back left corner is where the holiday decorations are kept. Officially setting zones would clarify what goes where. 

Essential Questions

An essential question is the one question that drives a project. It is a higher order question that is determined once enough information is located to build a puzzlement in the mind of the researcher. What puzzlement, or curiosity, does the research have about the topic?

Right now, I am beginning to be puzzled by the idea of what factors would lead to a garage that.s in the shape mine is at the moment?  What is the most efficient way to make order? What would I do with the space once it is cleared out?

Currently, this is my garage space (I'll address the studio spaces at a later time). It is a typical space for one car with a door to the interior of the house, double-doors at the back that lead to a printing studio (one door is blocked by a table), and the pull-up garage door. Every surface is piled up with stuff as you saw in previous posts, as are the shelves and the interior floor space.

Bins of organization efforts

Bins are a solution, especially the see-through variety. By using the see-through kind of bins, I can make labels I can tape to the inside so it's seen on the outside, but does not fall off. This may be the way to go. That way everything I want to keep in protected from being crushed and from general dust/dirt that accumulates from non-use because although I do not use everything I own everyday, I do want it handy when I DO want to use it!

Target, $5.99, 18 quart

Psychology of Disorganization

Hoarding is a version of clutter mania. An interesting article by Randy Frost and Rachel Gross explains in its abstract the hoarding can be linked to perfectionism, a trait of a gifted thinker. It can also be linked to obsessive behaviors and a scarcity mentally (a just in case scenario). Hoarders tend to have family members who hoard as well -- a pot calling the kettle black?  Or the garage desk a pantry?

Types of Research

Questions can be prepared according to the type of research a person is doing.

Descriptive research is about how things are now. 

Questions could be: How do people in my neighborhood arrange their garages? 

What purpose do garages serve in our society? How is clutter addressed in the media?

Historical research is about how things were in the past.

Questions could be: What factors prompted the need for garages in the first place?

How did garages come be attached to homes instead of a separate building? 

How was clutter addressed in my grandmothers' time?

Experimental research is about cause and effect. It is about how one action results in another.

Questions could be: What psychological effect does eliminating clutter have?

How much time is saved locating items when they are in labeled bins? 

Which organizing system makes the most efficient use of garage space?

All of these types of research may have a part in my current project since aspects of each will be addressed.

Believe it or not, this is better than it was!

Asking Good Questions

Questions can become monotonous. When that happens, and the research efforts stagnate, it is time to expand into other types of questions to change the point of view of the topic....a change of perspective.

Quantity Question

How many ways might a garage be arranged?

Reorganization Question

What would happen if I built a second garage?

Supposition Question

How would the amount of garage stuff change or be different if I give up my art studios?

Viewpoint Question

How would my garage be interpreted by a Generation Xer?

Involvement Question

If you had a garage of stuff like mine,what would you do?

Forced Association Question

How is my garage like the world of politics?

Evaluation Question

What is the ultimate value of an organized garage?

My Garage

Clutterness

Merriam Webster defines clutter as "a large amount of things that are not arranged in a neat or orderly way : a crowded or disordered collection of things" I guess that would describe the current circumstances in my garage and studio.   I think it is interesting to think that clutter is both a verb and a noun. I can clutter an area by placing many unrelated items in that space. The items in that area are called clutter.

Another interesting thought worth noting is clutter rhymes with flutter, mutter, sputter, strutter, splutter, stutter, putter....

This makes me think of the Name Game, a song by Shirley Ellis:

Bloom's Taxonomy

Bloom's Taxonomy is a list of the 6 levels of learning, from basic facts to creating something new. Bloom's 6 levels of learning are directly related to 6 levels of questions that correspond to each level.

For example, the 6 levels of learning:
Lower Order Thinking [LOTS]
Remembering (basic facts)....What is the clutter in the garage?
Understanding (define terms) ......How do I define clutter?
Apply (use facts to take action).....How do I show the areas of storage in the garage?

Higher Order Thinking [HOTS]
Analyzing (see patterns)...What categories of equipment would pieces of clutter fit into? Sort clutter.
Evaluating (make judgments)....What criteria does the best job of sorting obvious materials and miscellaneous clutter into bins?
Create (make a new point of view)....In what way can the garage be organized to store items I want to keep?

Questions as a Driving Force

Questions are the driving force of research. They target the research efforts toward a goal. At first the questions are broad, but as the research continues the questions become more specific and the information becomes more detailed. Asking the questions out loud uses the brain's ability to work behind the scenes to help a research notice information in odd places that probably would not have been noticed beforehand.

For this blog's topic, the questions should begin with
Why do I want to sort the stuff in my garage?  What ways can stuff be organized? How important is sorting stuff to being able to find it later?  What purposes do organization serve?

This set of benches, sit atop each other, appear to have had order
at one time. See the labeled bins?

Welcome!

Welcome to my garage and studios! Embarking on an organization project is challenging, but certainly rewarding in the end when everything has been categorized, put away, and tidy with a precision miter.

As of today, these rooms appear to have been picked up and shaken (the result of installing a new driveway, patio, French doors, and stairs). While the workmen worked, the files and cabinets and detrimus of an artistic lifestyle were shuffled around without mercy. Now, it is time to find order in an un-ordered environment!

Stuff just got put helter skelter to get it out of the workmen's way!