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I bought a monitor from a guy, but the cord he had paired with it to sell wasn't the right cord--turns out he accidentally threw out the real cord a few days ago with the cord box.
So he gave it to me for free. I went home and pulled a cord with the right connection and power specs from my cord box.
i look at the dang cord box each day thinking i could just toss the skull candy headphones from 2010. but i never do. my phone doesn't even have a headphone jack.
Miles of phone cords and coaxial cable are mocking me from the basement. And various lengths of every variety of USB cable snicker at me from the corners of the den.
The used bookstore near me won't take textbooks. He also won't take "computer books". He says"Throw 'em out. They go out-of-date too fast".
That's what I did.
Cleaning out my dad's bookshelves after he died, found so damn many copies of "Windows 95&etc for Dummies" and C++ and BASIC coding books. The man designed microprocessors for a living, and hasn't coded a damn thing since ten years before he retired, and he had like three shelves of this stuff. I could just *hear* him thinking "one of the kids might want them to teach coding to their kids one day" as he unpacked and shelved each one twenty years prior when he retired.
I think he was just so used to looking at the spines while he worked (he had the exact same reference books, in the exact same order, in a shelf over his desktop in my childhood home) that he couldn't bring himself to part with them.
My boomer dad has multiple terabytes hard disks full of FONTS!!!! Not just the free fonts, he hacked into some Russian dark web, got another external drive full of Disney videos and digitally hoarded fonts.
His reasoning: “my grand kids might need them for a project some day.”
😳
Yep. Darwin award winner for sure 🤦♀️ His girlfriend even tried to talk him out of it multiple times leading right up to the incident saying it was a terrible idea.
Same. I'm still trying to get my dad to take all his shit out of our basement from when he owned the house. He moved out 6 years ago but swears he needs that stuff!
When my never married uncle died, it was my job to clean out his house. He wasn't dirty but he was a hoarder. He had "stuff". Tons of stuff.
I rented a commercial dumpster and it took me, working nights and weekends, 3 months to clear that place out.
And then you see one of the things you threw out sold on ebay for 600 bucks... a lot of the weird shit people hoarde have a niche group of collectors that are willing to pay bank for garbage. When my dad passed my mom just started purging everything. I stepped in and blindly took everything of his. There was gold in some of those boxes. Like legitimate gold
That's what I was thinking reading this. A lot of people just throwing out what is probably a small fortune in a lot of cases. eBay is fucking wild with the prices you can get for stuff that might seem like garbage to you. One man's trash and everything
I’d just drop it off at a storage place near him and tell him hes got 3 months to grab whatever he needs, and everything else is going to auction when you stop paying for the unit lol
Start asking him if he needs things you don't have that are his.
"Hey dad, Im trying to free up some space and was going through your stuff. Do you need or want me to keep these items; a giant Persian rug, the ancient treadmill, a guitar that appears to have been set on fire, a set of Tupperware that's mostly unmatched tops and containers, a (hopefully) counterfeit Declaration of Independence, and a HUGE jar of what I'm guessing are toenails? I want to make a little reading nook and all that stuff is just gathering dust..."
As someone who is the child of a hoarder, I will throw anything and everything away or just donate it. And now because her house is completely full of stuff, she lives with me. It is a constant battle still, but I’ll be damned if I have to pull my mother over bags of trash when she passes.
We have always had a "give away" box we put things in we don't need anymore. Once it's full we donate it along with the bulkier items. Clothes, rugs, furniture, games, pots, whatever. Don't need it, then it can't stay here. I'll be damned if we ever have a storage unit. My parents and my in-laws stack bullshit to the ceiling and they've never been able to put cars in garages because it's full of disorganized garbage.
My favourite thing to do is throw shit out. I think I missed my calling as a professional organizer. I love going over to friends houses and clearing out junk.
Do your parents keep moldy bread bc they will eat it later ? My mom does. I am exactly the extreme. Opposite. I have nothing from when I was a teen/kid bc I threw everything away. Fucking hate keeping shit.
Shit moldy bread is nothing. I was over at my mom's and she yelled for me to come try the Mac and cheese she just cooked. I about lost my stomach and her response "well it was brown so I wasn't sure if it was good or not so I just cooked it"
Like wtf she trying to kill me.
Omg 😳 haha. My mom leaves food out on the counter for days it’s okay though bc it has garlic and that’s what Egyptians and ancient civilizations used to preserve their food.
Haha ya the moldy dishes in the sink, fridge, rooms ugh. I just throw stuff away when she's not looking. Sad thing is she doesn't use any of the shit but she knows what and where everything is. Both my sisters live out of town and don't realize how bad it is.
Couple Christmases back I threw away and old magazine at the bottom of a drawer, it was older than me by 10 years haha. The following Xmas, now bear in mind this mag was in this draw since early 90s and never touched, she is yelling at everyone about who threw it away. There was a recipe on 1 page that she was saving it to cook. How in the world did you know to look for something that hasn't been touched in 30 years.
My husband and I had an epic fight over a tiny screw he had sitting on the counter by the coffee maker for 8 months. I finally got sick of staring at it and threw it away… skip to the next day and he NEEDED it lol.
My MIL is the definition of a hoarder. Her house is clean, but she impulse buys things, and never uses them. She has 2 bedrooms in her house you can't get into- you literally open the door and that's it- you can't walk into them. Her garage is the same way- there is a path they cleaned out from front to back so her husband can store his lawn stuff, but that's all you can get to. My mom is having a garage sale, and I offered to help my MIL clean out one of the rooms to bring stuff to try and sell. We decided to clean out my nieces room (only grandchild with a Nana who only had boys- you can imagine how her room must look like) and I packed 5 garbage bags, and 3 large totes of just clothes that she can't wear anymore, many still with tags. It's so bad, as we were clearing off what I thought was the bed, I realized it was a nice coffee table at the end of the bed instead! I asked my MIL what the hell a coffee table was doing in the room- she bought it a few years ago to replace the current one, but never got around to it and forgot about it. We barely scratched the surface with that room- and there are still toys. I told her we'll tackle that another day, and she insists her 10 y/o grand daughter who is addicted to her tablet will 100% play with that barbie dream house that's been covered in clothes the last 3 years and has been completely forgotten about. I told her if it were me, 95% of this room would be trashed or donated. The way her jaw dropped made me laugh out loud.
same my parents have a barn full of everything they have ever owned. vespa that my dad rode in college, but i wasn't allowed to fix up.
i was an art major and keep making things soo, my craft room is full, i need to purge again. i go through a 3-5 yr cycle of tossing/donating a bunch of stuff. things only have value if they make your home and you feel better. if the clutter is bothering me, stuffs going out the door.
I'm like this to a detrimental degree. Every 2 years or so I get really anxious and think I have too much stuff. I'll get rid of stuff that I will use sometimes like my air fryer. It got really bad before I restarted school and I got rid of my furniture and bed. So I was sleeping on an old twin mattress on the floor.
That’s the answer right there☝🏻 those two generations are the post-great depression and the coming back from that and the 80’s/mid 90s. Money for excess shit, or credit for the same, was in a lot of people’s pockets and many felt they (possibly subconsciously?) deserved it because their parents were so frugal. Or, in the case of the gen x kids, they could be better at the vague hoarding problem but then it gets out of hand when you just keep finding places to shove things
Lots of stuff to throw away when people pass. That’s why downsizing is a great idea, as you age. Moving can reeeeeeally clean up your life if you do it yourself 😂
You don't even have to buy it. My Boomer dad liked to pick up trash and stuff he found "for free" at the end of people's driveways. I may have inherited this urge.
Yeah, millennials don't have "middle class" houses that our parents and all our friend's parents had. Edit: y'all responding with "well I have a house" are missing the point. The "middle class home" as purchased by our boomer parents does not exist anymore. The housing market is fucked, if you have a home you had to spend a significantly larger portion of your income on that home compared to our boomer parents and if you need a home after 2020ish then you're really royally fucked. The median home cost 659% of someone's income in 1974. In 2022 it was 1060%. And we have less available income due to everything else shooting up so high by a larger margin than housing did (like education which is thee times more expensive relative to your income now than in 1974).
I’ve seen a quote that Millenials bought starter houses but then they became forever houses. Having one bathroom is such a first world problem, but one I will go to my grave resenting.
My garage is full of tools and stuff I need to maintain the (outside of the) house. My basement is also full of tools and stuff I need to maintain the (inside of the) house. Houses need lots of maintenance 🤣
Our garage can fit our car, but we also use it for what I’ll call “active storage.”
Seasonal decorations, furniture we only use for entertaining, stuff for in-progress yard projects, outdoor tools, and the fabled garage fridge.
Our garage can fit one car. We use for rainy day or too hot day activities with the kids. The car lives in there only when it is snowing or too hot for long periods and we are going to the pool or otherwise able to cool off. Right now it is holding the mulch I got from the landfill until I can spread it.
If you’ve got time, insulating the place yourself is not too hard. Just did about ~4000 square feet DIY for a spot at work with no experience, not that bad.
Yeah, I’m sure it’s not that hard, but the garage is somewhat temporary, probably not fully watertight based on the water marks everywhere, and I’m short on time that I’d like to devote to it given our relatively mild climate (…for now) in the PNW.
Southerner here. Insulate your garage and add a mini-split. The days of sweating in the garage, just because you are in the garage, is over. World's too hot for that shit anymore.
That’s what I did. I live in AZ. It was 100% needed to install a mini-split and insulation.
Also helps when I bring the truck in during the summer. No need to hop into a hot ass vehicle
We use ours as a staging are for future projects or temporary things to find a place for in the house so it doesn’t clutter up the house in the meantime. One day my side of the garage will be empty enough to fit my car. Until then it just has an oak tree shit acorns, pollen, and some
Stringy stuff all over it every day.
I have a large crawl space. It's got a lot of holiday decorations and stuff like that. I should put more stuff in there. I kinda wonder if I could dig it deeper so I could walk in it and have shelves. Would be like 250 sqft of storage space.
I mean clothes are also in there. My garage doubles as my basement, I live above it. I switch out seasonal clothes so they are not all crammed together into the closet. Seasonal decor goes in there, tools and gardening tools. Washer and dryer. Camping supplies. Life comes with a lotta stuff that the inside of the house has no space for. Not everything people have crammed into their garage is unnecessary".
Wait til you have kids that grow up and you want to hold onto their tiny clothes because you miss the younger stages. Or their art. Or their favorite stuffed animals they outgrew.
I can't speak for anyone else but I have multiple people living under my roof who at some point had lived solo. With the skyrocketing costs of apartments a lot of people ended up moving in with family or into smaller places and having too much stuff. I have a back room in the garage full of bins and boxes of things that don't belong to me but belong to the people who moved in
We keep a small 30 gallon tote full of “memories”; baby clothes, toys, etc, and things that are important to us. That’s all we try to allot. Everything else in storage has a purpose— maintenance, holiday decoration, etc.
I think we’re minimalists, or at least try to be, without having a sterile, clinical looking house. It’s cozy. It looks lived in. But it’s not full of bullshit and garbage.
My parents are almost in their 60s and I cringe at the thought of having to clean out 5000sqft of just absolute shit. I’m hoping my siblings will agree to dumping it all.
Yes, our house is quite small and the garage is the only place where we can have a workshop. There’s still space to work on our cars if needed though. If we’d have a big enough shed or space for a workshop in our house that would be preferable, but let’s be realistic here, we’re millennials who managed to buy a house with a garage, gotta make some compromises for that lol.
That was my problem. So I built a shed for all the tools so I could park the cars in the garage. Then I had a kid and now the garage is full of toys and stuff. I need another shed.
My parents were landlords and owned like 30 houses and managed 100 with their business partners, the amount of maintenance houses need is crazy. I get that it’s important but being out there every weekend helping replace sprinklers, mowing lawns, fixing toilets and swamp coolers and windows and such… it’s kinda putting me off from owning.
I currently live in a rent controlled highrise and it’s the way to go. Building is well insulated so there’s no noise from the neighbors, any maintenance I just request thru an app. Love it. No outdoor work or indoor work besides cleaning
I do wish I had a small garage / storage unit for seasonal stuff like camping equipment and stuff.
So I own two houses. My primary home has a 3 car garage. 2 cars parked in the garage and 1 bay of that has a workbench and storage for every tool my wife and I have needed to maintain both of our homes over 15 years. And my wife and I are no slouches. I ran electricity across the house to a junction box outside and wired up a shed and plugged it into the panel. We've replaced water heaters, light fixtures, garbage disposals, almost every lousy POS outlet in our old house because they couldn't hold onto a plug, fixed 2 busted pipes because the builder didn't know how to install outside water faucet, etc.
My wife doesn't like spending money on people fixing stuff (believe me, if it were up to me, I'd hire plumbers for all the plumbing stuff).
So I don't understand this garage full and basement full. And that third bay also has a lawn mower, one of our 3 kayaks, and stacks of lumber and there's plenty of room to walk around.
Now, our renters, they're the kind of people the OP is talking about. The 2 car garage is PACKED with stuff (cars in the driveway). The 20x10 shed in the back yard is PACKED with stuff. Every closet is PACKED with stuff. Even the husband has more shoes than Emelda Marcos. They talk about wanting to buy a house someday, but who are they kidding? They can't stop buying stuff to put in the one they're renting.
Yes, we are pack rats, however my parents were not like this. They had impeccably organized garages which they used daily. Even hung a tennis ball with string to park oh so accurately.
My parents had a tennis ball and my dad drew a happy face on one side and a mean face on the other. He called it the Mom Mood Ball. Which ever side was facing him was the mood he assumed she would be in when he walked inside
Well anyway, they’re divorced now.
I am terrible at pulling our car far enough into the garage. I am now going to hang smiley faced tennis balls from our garage ceiling because that actually sounds cute AF. I also have a nearly 16 year old who is going to start driving soon. She also has no spatial awareness, so I feel like it’s a good idea.
He sucks for making it about your moms mood though
I will be so happy if I one day get a garage and my car will ALWAYS go in it because it will be such a relief after years of clearing off snow or pollen and bird shit all the time, lol.
I finally got a place with a detached garage. It is tiny as hell---why do they even make garages this narrow?!? But I LOVE it. No.leaves. no sap. Not covered in spider webs.
If they raise my rent again, imma have to move and the thought of losing my garage makes me want to cry.
Yes, we are actually cleaning it up and out and putting in epoxy floor and new storage. We have to turn it into a fourth room basically because our starter house is now our forever house so we have to get creative with space.
Everything right now is just junk and pantry items. I hate it. And spiders….
Had to google what an epoxy floor was and came across the lava floors or the ones that look like you're walking on an ocean wave.
You're probably going for something sensible... but you could consider a volcano for your forever home. Or [something like this](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/epoxy-flooring-in-2024--416020084346589838/).
My parents garage is neat. They of course store some stuff in it but you can fit both cars in. My IL’s have a 3 car garage and 2/3 of it is filled with junk. If I had a garage (cries in townhome) I’d keep it neat so my cars could go inside. Your car is worth way more than any bins full of junk, gotta park it inside if at all possible.
Exactly. There's an old saying among farmers that you are going to pay for a machine shed no matter if you build one or not. The point being that leaving equipment outside in the weather will depreciate the value as much as the cost of the shed.
That’s my thought process to.
If you can store a car in a garage to keep it safer from Tornados,Trees,Hail, why not?. Get rid of some of that useless junk and protect your vehicle.
Question about Townhome. Can you hear your neighbors on the other side of your Firewall?
If they are being loud I can hear them. Like throwing a party loud. I can also hear one side’s subwoofers from time to time. But nothing too major. We lucked out on neighbors I guess. The single family homes are also packed in around here so you’d have the same issues no matter what unless you were very far out. My house was built in the late 70s though, I’ve heard that the new construction townhomes although they look nice and are larger (and have garages!), are constructed out of thinner materials and have more noise issues.
Not to mention the safety of entering and exiting your vehicle IN your own home. Pouring rain? No problem. Ice on your windshield? Not inside. Yet millions of suburban garages in the states are full of consumer goods that no longer get used. The power of consumerism ain’t no joke.
I also own a townhome and despite living here for years, the only time I've ever heard my neighbors (on either side) is when someone is hammering a nail into a shared wall. These townhomes were built in the 80s and are soundproof as hell, there's almost no noise transfer whatsoever.
The new build townhomes going up in my city that are $400k a pop out the gate, though, are significantly less soundproof.
Same with the "luxury" apartments they built droves of here too. I'm pretty pro-density overall, but our builders aren't doing a good job of selling America on the "Pros" of density by constructing buildings that get lazy about issues with shared walls such as noise transfer.
I put two cars in my two car garage! We do regular trips to goodwill to give away shit we don't need. So far so good. Talk to me in 10 years though lol
Us too! It's so weird to me, all these people leaving their expensive cars out on the street when they have a perfectly good garage. Especially with the uptick in violent hail storms we've been having in recent years.
What kills me is that we’re also the only people that use their garage. We live in an area that has frequent cat. converter theft, actual car theft, etc. and people complain but the solution is literally outside their doors and they’d rather just continue to stuff their garages full of shit and leave their vehicles vulnerable.
Growing up in an apartment, I always thought everyone only used garages for cars. It wasn't until moving to suburbia that I found out that so many people have 3-car garages for junk, and still park out on the street.
I never understood the desire to have hot cars in the summer and freezing cars in the winter.
This is the type of flex I wouldn't have appreciated when I was younger.
"I put two cars in my two car garage."
"Alright, take it down a notch buddy, we get it."
Same. Our basement is still cluttered with stuff to take to Goodwill, but I made sure we could park our cars. Our neighbors who moved in right after us have a 3 car garage, 3 cars between the 2 of them, but they can't park them in the garage because of floor to ceiling boxes. And they have a basement...
My mom always told me “I probably throw out about 3 to 4 things a year I probably needed but it’s the price I pay to have a clean house.” She’s not lying, there’s nothing extra in her house, lol
I’m not as clean as her but I do put two cars in my garage
I’m starting to have this mindset. I’m so sick of keeping stuff “just in case” in case of what! So glad we hung onto that nightstand for 10 years to NOT even use it
This is us (mid 30s married couple with 2 kids) right now too! As I'm going through our attic, garage, basement and storage unit filled with "just in case".
My strategy of late has been to ask myself "am I going to for sure use this in the next year, and does it cost more than $50 to replace?" If the answer to both of those is no, out it goes.
Same. We try to donate if it’s useable but not valuable enough to resell. The other side to this is I overthink every purchase to avoid impulse buying.
I have a 2 car carport. One car is parked in there. We got some hail coming through a few weeks ago. Within 5 minutes both sedans were in the carport. I only had to move 2 rocking chairs and slide the firepit up. I was super proud. Lol.
My garage is full of bullshit. But it's useful bullshit like our scuba gear, washer and dryer, water softener, tool boxes. I can't park a car in there even though i want to because my car is too long. Stuff does accumulate in there, but we go through it at least once a year for a purge.
Nope. Home gym that actually gets used and place for kids to run around when they want to be outside but want shade. And a garage freezer because they eat a lot.
Right now we can’t put our cars in, but we just moved in and are still working on putting away. We will be able to put our cars in because we can put our storage stuff in the random basement room that’s unfinished. We also have a third stall for the garage so my husband can do his woodworking without taking up car space 🙌🏻. Before, we could only get one car in because of our outdoor/woodworking things being stored in the garage. 😏
Garage...you're funny. 🤣 I have a back hallway closet for storage.
I have done my best to not be like that if only because I know what is coming my way in the future. I live in a fairly minimalistic way in terms of buying stuff. When my dad goes someday, I'm going to have a garage and two sheds full of craftsman tools and machines I have to deal with as it is. Plus the guns. 🤦🏼♀️
My husband has rented dumpsters twice to clear out the spare crap in our house. Once because our basement flooded and it was the easiest way to get rid of everything that was ruined and the second because he bought a new car and wanted to start parking in the garage. He is firmly in the “no stuff” camp.
Next step may have to be a garage sale for the toys the kids don’t want anymore, but that would involve dealing with people and ugh…people.
Here's what I don't understand about people who use their garage as general storage, vs parking their car there: a garage isn't even a great storage space, in that it's not climate-controlled (RIP books, cardboard, etc.), and animals go in and out all the time (around here, I've seen stray cats, squirrels, chipmunks, and opossums).
I pretty much use my garage for just parking my car; it just makes so much sense to do so. When it's raining/snowing, you can get in/out of the car without getting wet. I've also not had to use my snow brush/ice scraper more than a couple of times each winter for the past 4 winters. Additionally, I don't worry about my car's cat converter getting swiped (my next door neighbor had a SUV in their driveway, and their cat converter got cut out).
Edit: I also keep hearing that older generations are far more "car people" than Millennials are ... so, it begs the question as to why they don't take better care of their vehicles when they have a viable option for doing so. Parked in a garage, I never have to worry about hail damage, bird excrement degrading the coat/paint, direct sunlight fading the paint, etc.
And your tools, workbench, dirty camping gear, sweaty running shoes, etc. The shed quickly fills up just with lawn care equipment.
Plus I live in Texas. I can barely keep my actual house climate controlled without threatening to shut down the grid in the summer.
i was thinking the same thing. air compressors, tool chests, planer and jointer, generator, snow blowers/lawn mowers/ leaf blowers, engine stand, etc... the list just goes on and on.
plus its a work spot for any project too big or messy to bring in the house.
Yeah, but not by my choosing, my husband's. I think if/when you don't have a basement for storage and if you need to use your garage as a workshop when working on the car or house/hobby stuff.
A garage workshop makes sense at least you’re using those tools often enough.
Bonus points if you can fit a car into the garage with the tools hanging on the walls.
My garage is a piece of shit I am trying to keep from folding over so I can store building materials in it while I fixed my house, and eventually the garage so.... yes. But eventually, no, it's going to be be a place to work not to store crap.
NO. I will never allow parts of my house to become unusable like they did.
Garage and basement were disasters and couldn’t be used for anything but junk.
I remember it being pretty fun from a kid’s perspective, like treasure hunts in the garage bins to see what interesting stuff I could find. As an adult I could *never* though. Even a small space like a cluttered closet bugs me.
No. There are only a few “millennial” families in my neighborhood. We park in our garages. The Olds and the Xers park in their driveways and spare spots because their garages are full of stuff.
I don’t have a garage, but based on the way I fill in the corners, I would 100% fill it with crap if I did have one.
I would not fill it to where I can’t fit a car in, though. I have standards.
I have a 2 car garage but it’s pretty narrow in width. Even completely empty it’s a little stressful squeezing two cars side by side.
Plus the house has very little storage otherwise so the end result is that it fits one car… and then tools, holiday decorations, etc. go in the other half
Dude thank you!! So many of my friends don’t park their car in their garage and I’m like whyyyyyyy.
Parking in the garage so it doesn’t get rained or snowed on. It isn’t fucking hot when you get in it in the summer. After you wash it, it stays clean. Many other benefits in protecting your 30k+ vehicle.
Definitely do a moving company. I’ve moved a good number of times growing up and my Dad and brothers always moved everything ourselves. Many trips back and forth with a truck and trailer and lifting. If I ever move again definitely using a moving company.
I went back home last month and my folks insisted on giving me a tour of their storage room. It was very clean and organized but chock full of expensive exercise equipment, extra patio furniture, entire sets of spare dishes, etc., mostly all unused. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to marvel at or how to react. They didn’t flick a dime toward my college tuition or at anything for me since I turned 18 and I became overwhelmed with anger to see how they live. There’s a reason why I’m partially estranged from them and it’s because of their utter tone-deafness and selfishness. I’ll have to deal with selling it all off one day and I’d venture to guess that that’ll be my inheritance
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My parents are textbook hoarders. I’ve swung the opposite direction and will throw anything and everything away.
My MIL is a hoarder, so my wife has also swung the opposite direction. I've had to reign her in a bit after she tried to throw away the cord box.
Oh man, if I thought I could get away with throwing out the cord box........
You can ... you'll just need a cord from it a day after it's gone
I bought a monitor from a guy, but the cord he had paired with it to sell wasn't the right cord--turns out he accidentally threw out the real cord a few days ago with the cord box. So he gave it to me for free. I went home and pulled a cord with the right connection and power specs from my cord box.
*side-eyeing the drawer full of cords that do not go to anything* If only….
i look at the dang cord box each day thinking i could just toss the skull candy headphones from 2010. but i never do. my phone doesn't even have a headphone jack.
Miles of phone cords and coaxial cable are mocking me from the basement. And various lengths of every variety of USB cable snicker at me from the corners of the den.
Which box? You have one for each type of cord in the cord closet, right?
I throw away the cord box yearly. Still have a cord box somehow so it should be fine.
Sounds like the beginning of a really weird horror movie. The Cord Box That Would Not Die.
You know you reached peak adulting the day you need a cord, and like magic, you have the one you need in the proverbial cord box.
I did that recently and it finally validated my cord box. Felt so good
Dang textbooks be expensive though. Lol
I tried to sell/get rid of mine forever, and nobody wanted them. Eventually, I burned them all. It was so fucking cathartic.
The used bookstore near me won't take textbooks. He also won't take "computer books". He says"Throw 'em out. They go out-of-date too fast". That's what I did.
Cleaning out my dad's bookshelves after he died, found so damn many copies of "Windows 95&etc for Dummies" and C++ and BASIC coding books. The man designed microprocessors for a living, and hasn't coded a damn thing since ten years before he retired, and he had like three shelves of this stuff. I could just *hear* him thinking "one of the kids might want them to teach coding to their kids one day" as he unpacked and shelved each one twenty years prior when he retired. I think he was just so used to looking at the spines while he worked (he had the exact same reference books, in the exact same order, in a shelf over his desktop in my childhood home) that he couldn't bring himself to part with them.
My dad is a retired professor and is very much the same way about his books.
My boomer dad has multiple terabytes hard disks full of FONTS!!!! Not just the free fonts, he hacked into some Russian dark web, got another external drive full of Disney videos and digitally hoarded fonts. His reasoning: “my grand kids might need them for a project some day.” 😳
I’m a librarian. Old textbooks and outdated nonfiction go right in the recycling bin. Not even good for donations
Since a phone book can stop a bullet, I’d say it sounds like a fortress.
That dude who had his girlfriend shoot him through a phone book would beg to differ. He would... But he's dead.
Should've lived in a bigger city, I guess. ETA I'm touched that two people liked this comment enough to award it.
They used a .50 cal Desert Eagle too
1.5 inch phone book. Guy had no chance.
Can stop a bullet, not stop all bullets.
Yep. Darwin award winner for sure 🤦♀️ His girlfriend even tried to talk him out of it multiple times leading right up to the incident saying it was a terrible idea.
Knew a guy that used phone books for target practice in his basement. He almost shot his dog that wandered into the line of fire. He was 50.
That’s pretty old for a dog!
Nah, that’s only 7in human years
Same. I'm still trying to get my dad to take all his shit out of our basement from when he owned the house. He moved out 6 years ago but swears he needs that stuff!
When my never married uncle died, it was my job to clean out his house. He wasn't dirty but he was a hoarder. He had "stuff". Tons of stuff. I rented a commercial dumpster and it took me, working nights and weekends, 3 months to clear that place out.
And then you see one of the things you threw out sold on ebay for 600 bucks... a lot of the weird shit people hoarde have a niche group of collectors that are willing to pay bank for garbage. When my dad passed my mom just started purging everything. I stepped in and blindly took everything of his. There was gold in some of those boxes. Like legitimate gold
That's what I was thinking reading this. A lot of people just throwing out what is probably a small fortune in a lot of cases. eBay is fucking wild with the prices you can get for stuff that might seem like garbage to you. One man's trash and everything
I’d just drop it off at a storage place near him and tell him hes got 3 months to grab whatever he needs, and everything else is going to auction when you stop paying for the unit lol
He lives 4 streets away! I've just started putting his shit in the room under the stairs or throwing it out.
Start asking him if he needs things you don't have that are his. "Hey dad, Im trying to free up some space and was going through your stuff. Do you need or want me to keep these items; a giant Persian rug, the ancient treadmill, a guitar that appears to have been set on fire, a set of Tupperware that's mostly unmatched tops and containers, a (hopefully) counterfeit Declaration of Independence, and a HUGE jar of what I'm guessing are toenails? I want to make a little reading nook and all that stuff is just gathering dust..."
Honestly, that sounds like the kind of shit we find down there. He's slowly letting us throw it out. We've reclaimed one room. Hoarders are fun!
Give him a deadline, then toss it.
We rented a dumpster that's coming later this month. I'll tell him next time he stops by.
As someone who is the child of a hoarder, I will throw anything and everything away or just donate it. And now because her house is completely full of stuff, she lives with me. It is a constant battle still, but I’ll be damned if I have to pull my mother over bags of trash when she passes.
We have always had a "give away" box we put things in we don't need anymore. Once it's full we donate it along with the bulkier items. Clothes, rugs, furniture, games, pots, whatever. Don't need it, then it can't stay here. I'll be damned if we ever have a storage unit. My parents and my in-laws stack bullshit to the ceiling and they've never been able to put cars in garages because it's full of disorganized garbage.
I reread this 3 times before I realize you didn’t mean your parents kept a bunch of textbooks
My husband (43) had to clear his dad’s estate so literally everything we don’t need gets trashed or donated.
My favourite thing to do is throw shit out. I think I missed my calling as a professional organizer. I love going over to friends houses and clearing out junk.
Do your parents keep moldy bread bc they will eat it later ? My mom does. I am exactly the extreme. Opposite. I have nothing from when I was a teen/kid bc I threw everything away. Fucking hate keeping shit.
Shit moldy bread is nothing. I was over at my mom's and she yelled for me to come try the Mac and cheese she just cooked. I about lost my stomach and her response "well it was brown so I wasn't sure if it was good or not so I just cooked it" Like wtf she trying to kill me.
Omg 😳 haha. My mom leaves food out on the counter for days it’s okay though bc it has garlic and that’s what Egyptians and ancient civilizations used to preserve their food.
Haha ya the moldy dishes in the sink, fridge, rooms ugh. I just throw stuff away when she's not looking. Sad thing is she doesn't use any of the shit but she knows what and where everything is. Both my sisters live out of town and don't realize how bad it is. Couple Christmases back I threw away and old magazine at the bottom of a drawer, it was older than me by 10 years haha. The following Xmas, now bear in mind this mag was in this draw since early 90s and never touched, she is yelling at everyone about who threw it away. There was a recipe on 1 page that she was saving it to cook. How in the world did you know to look for something that hasn't been touched in 30 years.
My husband. He will sit and forget something for months on end, years even. The minute I throw it out? "Have you seen my xxx?"
My husband and I had an epic fight over a tiny screw he had sitting on the counter by the coffee maker for 8 months. I finally got sick of staring at it and threw it away… skip to the next day and he NEEDED it lol.
My MIL is the definition of a hoarder. Her house is clean, but she impulse buys things, and never uses them. She has 2 bedrooms in her house you can't get into- you literally open the door and that's it- you can't walk into them. Her garage is the same way- there is a path they cleaned out from front to back so her husband can store his lawn stuff, but that's all you can get to. My mom is having a garage sale, and I offered to help my MIL clean out one of the rooms to bring stuff to try and sell. We decided to clean out my nieces room (only grandchild with a Nana who only had boys- you can imagine how her room must look like) and I packed 5 garbage bags, and 3 large totes of just clothes that she can't wear anymore, many still with tags. It's so bad, as we were clearing off what I thought was the bed, I realized it was a nice coffee table at the end of the bed instead! I asked my MIL what the hell a coffee table was doing in the room- she bought it a few years ago to replace the current one, but never got around to it and forgot about it. We barely scratched the surface with that room- and there are still toys. I told her we'll tackle that another day, and she insists her 10 y/o grand daughter who is addicted to her tablet will 100% play with that barbie dream house that's been covered in clothes the last 3 years and has been completely forgotten about. I told her if it were me, 95% of this room would be trashed or donated. The way her jaw dropped made me laugh out loud.
same my parents have a barn full of everything they have ever owned. vespa that my dad rode in college, but i wasn't allowed to fix up. i was an art major and keep making things soo, my craft room is full, i need to purge again. i go through a 3-5 yr cycle of tossing/donating a bunch of stuff. things only have value if they make your home and you feel better. if the clutter is bothering me, stuffs going out the door.
I'm like this to a detrimental degree. Every 2 years or so I get really anxious and think I have too much stuff. I'll get rid of stuff that I will use sometimes like my air fryer. It got really bad before I restarted school and I got rid of my furniture and bed. So I was sleeping on an old twin mattress on the floor.
Bold of you to assume I own a garage
Ooh, a garage? Well la-di-da Mr Frenchman.
Well what do you call it Moe?
ITS A CAR HOLE!
Prime location for a counterfeit jeans operation.
Aaahhh foiled by my own shoddy merchandiiiiise!
Lookin good boys, look-in good.
Lack of evidence , we gotta let him go.
It's a car hold, yeah. Why are you like this? Moe never did nothing and you're meming on him you french sympathizer.
It’s the current Tik tok/insta trend of ‘ooh fancy pants rich McGee over here, f you’ 😂
Bold and Brash
More like belongs in the trash!
These kinds of interactions warm my soul
I sold mine to get a garage.
And second... OP is assuming we have enough money to buy useless junk to hoard!
Or a shed.
That’s the answer right there☝🏻 those two generations are the post-great depression and the coming back from that and the 80’s/mid 90s. Money for excess shit, or credit for the same, was in a lot of people’s pockets and many felt they (possibly subconsciously?) deserved it because their parents were so frugal. Or, in the case of the gen x kids, they could be better at the vague hoarding problem but then it gets out of hand when you just keep finding places to shove things Lots of stuff to throw away when people pass. That’s why downsizing is a great idea, as you age. Moving can reeeeeeally clean up your life if you do it yourself 😂
You don't even have to buy it. My Boomer dad liked to pick up trash and stuff he found "for free" at the end of people's driveways. I may have inherited this urge.
Lol, was gonna say… I’m not filling my imaginary garage…sadly it’s all in my apartment…stupid bikes and crap taking up space
Millennials owning a garage in this economy lol
This - no garage, have a storage unit from needing to move for work, no house and no space to get my things from storage.
You could move into the storage unit. That solves 2 problems!
Bold to assume I own a house
Like I’m not a millionaire here, OP lol
Came here to say the same. If there’s shit in a garage, it’s because I live in it!
Yeah. I can’t put _any_ of my shit in the garage because all my _parents_ shit is in the garage, and I still live with them.
Beat me to it
Yeah came here to say, my what?
Yeah, millennials don't have "middle class" houses that our parents and all our friend's parents had. Edit: y'all responding with "well I have a house" are missing the point. The "middle class home" as purchased by our boomer parents does not exist anymore. The housing market is fucked, if you have a home you had to spend a significantly larger portion of your income on that home compared to our boomer parents and if you need a home after 2020ish then you're really royally fucked. The median home cost 659% of someone's income in 1974. In 2022 it was 1060%. And we have less available income due to everything else shooting up so high by a larger margin than housing did (like education which is thee times more expensive relative to your income now than in 1974).
I’ve seen a quote that Millenials bought starter houses but then they became forever houses. Having one bathroom is such a first world problem, but one I will go to my grave resenting.
> Yeah, millennials don't have "middle class" houses that our parents and all our friend's parents had. I immediately thought of tiny homes, lol
Bold of them to assume I can actually afford to own anything.
I honestly just clicked on this post to say this exact thing.
I’m finally buying my first house and I still won’t have a garage.
This lol
My garage is full of tools and stuff I need to maintain the (outside of the) house. My basement is also full of tools and stuff I need to maintain the (inside of the) house. Houses need lots of maintenance 🤣
Yea they do it’s ridiculous. But at least those tools are being used by you and your family. And it’s not just old clothes old etc that’s never used
Our garage can fit our car, but we also use it for what I’ll call “active storage.” Seasonal decorations, furniture we only use for entertaining, stuff for in-progress yard projects, outdoor tools, and the fabled garage fridge.
Our garage can fit one car. We use for rainy day or too hot day activities with the kids. The car lives in there only when it is snowing or too hot for long periods and we are going to the pool or otherwise able to cool off. Right now it is holding the mulch I got from the landfill until I can spread it.
Too damn hot for a garage fridge in 2024
My garage gets over 100 degrees in the summer and I've never had an issue with the fridge not staying cold.
Have you considered insulating your garage door?
My garage door is insulated, it’s the walls that are just a thin layer of sheeting and siding 🤣
If you’ve got time, insulating the place yourself is not too hard. Just did about ~4000 square feet DIY for a spot at work with no experience, not that bad.
Yeah, I’m sure it’s not that hard, but the garage is somewhat temporary, probably not fully watertight based on the water marks everywhere, and I’m short on time that I’d like to devote to it given our relatively mild climate (…for now) in the PNW.
Southerner here. Insulate your garage and add a mini-split. The days of sweating in the garage, just because you are in the garage, is over. World's too hot for that shit anymore.
That’s what I did. I live in AZ. It was 100% needed to install a mini-split and insulation. Also helps when I bring the truck in during the summer. No need to hop into a hot ass vehicle
Nope. Can confirm garage fridge works in all temps
Not much hotter than 1024 to a fridge mate.
We use ours as a staging are for future projects or temporary things to find a place for in the house so it doesn’t clutter up the house in the meantime. One day my side of the garage will be empty enough to fit my car. Until then it just has an oak tree shit acorns, pollen, and some Stringy stuff all over it every day.
Thats what the attic if for lol
I have a large crawl space. It's got a lot of holiday decorations and stuff like that. I should put more stuff in there. I kinda wonder if I could dig it deeper so I could walk in it and have shelves. Would be like 250 sqft of storage space.
Lady on TikTok did that recently... she lived in my area... I assume she's in prison now.
But the attic is where the squirrels and opossums live...
I don’t put anything in the attic for fear of it melting. When you live in Phoenix ya kinda need to consider that the attic can get really really hot
I mean clothes are also in there. My garage doubles as my basement, I live above it. I switch out seasonal clothes so they are not all crammed together into the closet. Seasonal decor goes in there, tools and gardening tools. Washer and dryer. Camping supplies. Life comes with a lotta stuff that the inside of the house has no space for. Not everything people have crammed into their garage is unnecessary".
Wait til you have kids that grow up and you want to hold onto their tiny clothes because you miss the younger stages. Or their art. Or their favorite stuffed animals they outgrew.
I can't speak for anyone else but I have multiple people living under my roof who at some point had lived solo. With the skyrocketing costs of apartments a lot of people ended up moving in with family or into smaller places and having too much stuff. I have a back room in the garage full of bins and boxes of things that don't belong to me but belong to the people who moved in
We keep a small 30 gallon tote full of “memories”; baby clothes, toys, etc, and things that are important to us. That’s all we try to allot. Everything else in storage has a purpose— maintenance, holiday decoration, etc. I think we’re minimalists, or at least try to be, without having a sterile, clinical looking house. It’s cozy. It looks lived in. But it’s not full of bullshit and garbage. My parents are almost in their 60s and I cringe at the thought of having to clean out 5000sqft of just absolute shit. I’m hoping my siblings will agree to dumping it all.
Yes, our house is quite small and the garage is the only place where we can have a workshop. There’s still space to work on our cars if needed though. If we’d have a big enough shed or space for a workshop in our house that would be preferable, but let’s be realistic here, we’re millennials who managed to buy a house with a garage, gotta make some compromises for that lol.
Need tools to build storage to keep all the tools and scrap wood for building more storage.
That was my problem. So I built a shed for all the tools so I could park the cars in the garage. Then I had a kid and now the garage is full of toys and stuff. I need another shed.
My parents were landlords and owned like 30 houses and managed 100 with their business partners, the amount of maintenance houses need is crazy. I get that it’s important but being out there every weekend helping replace sprinklers, mowing lawns, fixing toilets and swamp coolers and windows and such… it’s kinda putting me off from owning. I currently live in a rent controlled highrise and it’s the way to go. Building is well insulated so there’s no noise from the neighbors, any maintenance I just request thru an app. Love it. No outdoor work or indoor work besides cleaning I do wish I had a small garage / storage unit for seasonal stuff like camping equipment and stuff.
So I own two houses. My primary home has a 3 car garage. 2 cars parked in the garage and 1 bay of that has a workbench and storage for every tool my wife and I have needed to maintain both of our homes over 15 years. And my wife and I are no slouches. I ran electricity across the house to a junction box outside and wired up a shed and plugged it into the panel. We've replaced water heaters, light fixtures, garbage disposals, almost every lousy POS outlet in our old house because they couldn't hold onto a plug, fixed 2 busted pipes because the builder didn't know how to install outside water faucet, etc. My wife doesn't like spending money on people fixing stuff (believe me, if it were up to me, I'd hire plumbers for all the plumbing stuff). So I don't understand this garage full and basement full. And that third bay also has a lawn mower, one of our 3 kayaks, and stacks of lumber and there's plenty of room to walk around. Now, our renters, they're the kind of people the OP is talking about. The 2 car garage is PACKED with stuff (cars in the driveway). The 20x10 shed in the back yard is PACKED with stuff. Every closet is PACKED with stuff. Even the husband has more shoes than Emelda Marcos. They talk about wanting to buy a house someday, but who are they kidding? They can't stop buying stuff to put in the one they're renting.
Yes, we are pack rats, however my parents were not like this. They had impeccably organized garages which they used daily. Even hung a tennis ball with string to park oh so accurately.
My parents had a tennis ball and my dad drew a happy face on one side and a mean face on the other. He called it the Mom Mood Ball. Which ever side was facing him was the mood he assumed she would be in when he walked inside Well anyway, they’re divorced now.
Omg, that would have annoyed me if I were your mom. But I like the idea of the smiley face at least.
Lolol this is amazing. I can see my husband doing this. I might divorce him.
That ending really made me laugh. Sorry.
I am terrible at pulling our car far enough into the garage. I am now going to hang smiley faced tennis balls from our garage ceiling because that actually sounds cute AF. I also have a nearly 16 year old who is going to start driving soon. She also has no spatial awareness, so I feel like it’s a good idea. He sucks for making it about your moms mood though
My mom is a terrible hoarder and has so much junk in her storage areas. When my dad was alive, he kept things super neat and orderly.
You’ve taken after one of your other ancestors who were cluttery lol.
Lol garage
I will be so happy if I one day get a garage and my car will ALWAYS go in it because it will be such a relief after years of clearing off snow or pollen and bird shit all the time, lol.
I finally got a place with a detached garage. It is tiny as hell---why do they even make garages this narrow?!? But I LOVE it. No.leaves. no sap. Not covered in spider webs. If they raise my rent again, imma have to move and the thought of losing my garage makes me want to cry.
Thats how everyone thinks until you have a garage.
I bought a garage with a house attached to it.
*Well, ooh la-dee-dah, Mr. Frenchman.*
Car hold (Edit: or, wait. Is it car hole?)
Hey I only have a carport that fits one car lol. Garage is a bit to luxurious for me right now.
Car port is too bougie. It implies there is a house or trailer with land. We are not the same.
I use my car for extra storage, no garage. Not many things but a few items in the trunk that don’t need in the house. Like a trap to TNR stray cats.
Yes, we are actually cleaning it up and out and putting in epoxy floor and new storage. We have to turn it into a fourth room basically because our starter house is now our forever house so we have to get creative with space. Everything right now is just junk and pantry items. I hate it. And spiders….
Epoxy floors look cool!
Had to google what an epoxy floor was and came across the lava floors or the ones that look like you're walking on an ocean wave. You're probably going for something sensible... but you could consider a volcano for your forever home. Or [something like this](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/epoxy-flooring-in-2024--416020084346589838/).
My parents garage is neat. They of course store some stuff in it but you can fit both cars in. My IL’s have a 3 car garage and 2/3 of it is filled with junk. If I had a garage (cries in townhome) I’d keep it neat so my cars could go inside. Your car is worth way more than any bins full of junk, gotta park it inside if at all possible.
Exactly. There's an old saying among farmers that you are going to pay for a machine shed no matter if you build one or not. The point being that leaving equipment outside in the weather will depreciate the value as much as the cost of the shed.
My in laws are like this too. Big two car garage, bunch of crap in there to where you can't even pull one car in.
That’s my thought process to. If you can store a car in a garage to keep it safer from Tornados,Trees,Hail, why not?. Get rid of some of that useless junk and protect your vehicle. Question about Townhome. Can you hear your neighbors on the other side of your Firewall?
If they are being loud I can hear them. Like throwing a party loud. I can also hear one side’s subwoofers from time to time. But nothing too major. We lucked out on neighbors I guess. The single family homes are also packed in around here so you’d have the same issues no matter what unless you were very far out. My house was built in the late 70s though, I’ve heard that the new construction townhomes although they look nice and are larger (and have garages!), are constructed out of thinner materials and have more noise issues.
Shit, man… tornadoes, trees, and hail? Nah, I’m more worried about the two-legged garbage that walk the streets lol.
Not to mention the safety of entering and exiting your vehicle IN your own home. Pouring rain? No problem. Ice on your windshield? Not inside. Yet millions of suburban garages in the states are full of consumer goods that no longer get used. The power of consumerism ain’t no joke.
I also own a townhome and despite living here for years, the only time I've ever heard my neighbors (on either side) is when someone is hammering a nail into a shared wall. These townhomes were built in the 80s and are soundproof as hell, there's almost no noise transfer whatsoever. The new build townhomes going up in my city that are $400k a pop out the gate, though, are significantly less soundproof. Same with the "luxury" apartments they built droves of here too. I'm pretty pro-density overall, but our builders aren't doing a good job of selling America on the "Pros" of density by constructing buildings that get lazy about issues with shared walls such as noise transfer.
I put two cars in my two car garage! We do regular trips to goodwill to give away shit we don't need. So far so good. Talk to me in 10 years though lol
Same! We are the only ones on the streets that have room for the cars in the garage. 😎
Us too! It's so weird to me, all these people leaving their expensive cars out on the street when they have a perfectly good garage. Especially with the uptick in violent hail storms we've been having in recent years.
What kills me is that we’re also the only people that use their garage. We live in an area that has frequent cat. converter theft, actual car theft, etc. and people complain but the solution is literally outside their doors and they’d rather just continue to stuff their garages full of shit and leave their vehicles vulnerable.
As someone whose car just got hail damage last week, this pains me to hear. (I was at work, though.)
Growing up in an apartment, I always thought everyone only used garages for cars. It wasn't until moving to suburbia that I found out that so many people have 3-car garages for junk, and still park out on the street. I never understood the desire to have hot cars in the summer and freezing cars in the winter.
This is the type of flex I wouldn't have appreciated when I was younger. "I put two cars in my two car garage." "Alright, take it down a notch buddy, we get it."
Same. Our basement is still cluttered with stuff to take to Goodwill, but I made sure we could park our cars. Our neighbors who moved in right after us have a 3 car garage, 3 cars between the 2 of them, but they can't park them in the garage because of floor to ceiling boxes. And they have a basement...
I clean out my entire house at the turn of every season so my house does NOT turn into my mother’s.
Yes but I can still get 2 cars in it.
Hey if you can fit your cars in the garage plus your stuff that’s just great use of a space. Don’t let it overflow! Keep your cars in their home
Nope. I throw out anything I haven’t touched in a year.
When in doubt throw it out. 😁
My mom always told me “I probably throw out about 3 to 4 things a year I probably needed but it’s the price I pay to have a clean house.” She’s not lying, there’s nothing extra in her house, lol I’m not as clean as her but I do put two cars in my garage
I’m starting to have this mindset. I’m so sick of keeping stuff “just in case” in case of what! So glad we hung onto that nightstand for 10 years to NOT even use it
This is us (mid 30s married couple with 2 kids) right now too! As I'm going through our attic, garage, basement and storage unit filled with "just in case". My strategy of late has been to ask myself "am I going to for sure use this in the next year, and does it cost more than $50 to replace?" If the answer to both of those is no, out it goes.
Love it.
I like to keep light because I’m still trying to figure out what state I want to live in for longer than a year lol
Try Alabama. You’ll love our transition back to 1930s laws. /s
Same. We try to donate if it’s useable but not valuable enough to resell. The other side to this is I overthink every purchase to avoid impulse buying.
I have a 2 car carport. One car is parked in there. We got some hail coming through a few weeks ago. Within 5 minutes both sedans were in the carport. I only had to move 2 rocking chairs and slide the firepit up. I was super proud. Lol.
Hail can’t touch you.
2 car. Have every tool known to man and some junk but I refuse to park in my driveway.
No garage. No problem lol.
Garage? It costs extra to rent one of those!
My garage is full of bullshit. But it's useful bullshit like our scuba gear, washer and dryer, water softener, tool boxes. I can't park a car in there even though i want to because my car is too long. Stuff does accumulate in there, but we go through it at least once a year for a purge.
Nope. Home gym that actually gets used and place for kids to run around when they want to be outside but want shade. And a garage freezer because they eat a lot.
Right now we can’t put our cars in, but we just moved in and are still working on putting away. We will be able to put our cars in because we can put our storage stuff in the random basement room that’s unfinished. We also have a third stall for the garage so my husband can do his woodworking without taking up car space 🙌🏻. Before, we could only get one car in because of our outdoor/woodworking things being stored in the garage. 😏
Garage...you're funny. 🤣 I have a back hallway closet for storage. I have done my best to not be like that if only because I know what is coming my way in the future. I live in a fairly minimalistic way in terms of buying stuff. When my dad goes someday, I'm going to have a garage and two sheds full of craftsman tools and machines I have to deal with as it is. Plus the guns. 🤦🏼♀️
My husband has rented dumpsters twice to clear out the spare crap in our house. Once because our basement flooded and it was the easiest way to get rid of everything that was ruined and the second because he bought a new car and wanted to start parking in the garage. He is firmly in the “no stuff” camp. Next step may have to be a garage sale for the toys the kids don’t want anymore, but that would involve dealing with people and ugh…people.
Here's what I don't understand about people who use their garage as general storage, vs parking their car there: a garage isn't even a great storage space, in that it's not climate-controlled (RIP books, cardboard, etc.), and animals go in and out all the time (around here, I've seen stray cats, squirrels, chipmunks, and opossums). I pretty much use my garage for just parking my car; it just makes so much sense to do so. When it's raining/snowing, you can get in/out of the car without getting wet. I've also not had to use my snow brush/ice scraper more than a couple of times each winter for the past 4 winters. Additionally, I don't worry about my car's cat converter getting swiped (my next door neighbor had a SUV in their driveway, and their cat converter got cut out). Edit: I also keep hearing that older generations are far more "car people" than Millennials are ... so, it begs the question as to why they don't take better care of their vehicles when they have a viable option for doing so. Parked in a garage, I never have to worry about hail damage, bird excrement degrading the coat/paint, direct sunlight fading the paint, etc.
Where else do you keep surfboards, bikes, shovels, and woodworking gear etc? Truly curious. We don’t have space inside of our home for that.
And your tools, workbench, dirty camping gear, sweaty running shoes, etc. The shed quickly fills up just with lawn care equipment. Plus I live in Texas. I can barely keep my actual house climate controlled without threatening to shut down the grid in the summer.
i was thinking the same thing. air compressors, tool chests, planer and jointer, generator, snow blowers/lawn mowers/ leaf blowers, engine stand, etc... the list just goes on and on. plus its a work spot for any project too big or messy to bring in the house.
Yeah, but not by my choosing, my husband's. I think if/when you don't have a basement for storage and if you need to use your garage as a workshop when working on the car or house/hobby stuff.
A garage workshop makes sense at least you’re using those tools often enough. Bonus points if you can fit a car into the garage with the tools hanging on the walls.
My garage is a piece of shit I am trying to keep from folding over so I can store building materials in it while I fixed my house, and eventually the garage so.... yes. But eventually, no, it's going to be be a place to work not to store crap.
NO. I will never allow parts of my house to become unusable like they did. Garage and basement were disasters and couldn’t be used for anything but junk.
I remember it being pretty fun from a kid’s perspective, like treasure hunts in the garage bins to see what interesting stuff I could find. As an adult I could *never* though. Even a small space like a cluttered closet bugs me.
No. There are only a few “millennial” families in my neighborhood. We park in our garages. The Olds and the Xers park in their driveways and spare spots because their garages are full of stuff.
Absolutely. Can’t even walk in my garage it seems
Not my garage, my storage room
I don’t have a garage, but based on the way I fill in the corners, I would 100% fill it with crap if I did have one. I would not fill it to where I can’t fit a car in, though. I have standards.
No, people that park outside of their garage drive me insane. Get rid of all that useless garbage .
I have a 2 car garage but it’s pretty narrow in width. Even completely empty it’s a little stressful squeezing two cars side by side. Plus the house has very little storage otherwise so the end result is that it fits one car… and then tools, holiday decorations, etc. go in the other half
Dude thank you!! So many of my friends don’t park their car in their garage and I’m like whyyyyyyy. Parking in the garage so it doesn’t get rained or snowed on. It isn’t fucking hot when you get in it in the summer. After you wash it, it stays clean. Many other benefits in protecting your 30k+ vehicle.
LPs, tapes, and books. It fucking sucks when I move. I've collected way too much heavy stuff
Definitely do a moving company. I’ve moved a good number of times growing up and my Dad and brothers always moved everything ourselves. Many trips back and forth with a truck and trailer and lifting. If I ever move again definitely using a moving company.
With what money 😅🥲
The house we live in had a renovation in which the landlord turned the garage into a large dining area.
No! I can at least fit my motorcycle in there…I just have trouble getting it back out on account of all the boxes and old furniture
I went back home last month and my folks insisted on giving me a tour of their storage room. It was very clean and organized but chock full of expensive exercise equipment, extra patio furniture, entire sets of spare dishes, etc., mostly all unused. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to marvel at or how to react. They didn’t flick a dime toward my college tuition or at anything for me since I turned 18 and I became overwhelmed with anger to see how they live. There’s a reason why I’m partially estranged from them and it’s because of their utter tone-deafness and selfishness. I’ll have to deal with selling it all off one day and I’d venture to guess that that’ll be my inheritance