“What in the world was that?” The crashing sound came from the garage. It almost sounded like someone crashed into the garage door. But the overhead door was open. Maybe the neighbor across the street was working on something in his garage. No, it didn’t look like he was home.
When I stepped into the garage, I saw stuff all over the floor. A shelf had come down off the wall above my workbench, scattering boxes of nails and screws across the floor, dumping out another box of household batteries, and leaving the light, eero (wifi repeater), and echo hanging from wires. And the worst – the plastic box with all my fountain pen ink bottles.
Fortunately, that last box was still closed up. But a bottle had broken open, covering everything in blue ink. I fished out some ink cartridges and converters, and then threw the whole thing away. I couldn’t even tell which bottle of red, green, blue, or black was which.
After I got some better hollow wall anchors at the hardware store, I reattached the shelf and decided to put all the organizer boxes of nails, screws, nuts and washers in a workbench drawer. Lighter things like a can of WD-40, picture hanging hardware, the box of batteries, and some extension cords were fine up on the shelf.
I hadn’t planned on it, but this was a good chance to declutter my workbench area. It’s interesting how stuff accumulates in places around the house. Unless you intentionally declutter, stuff will take over your living spaces. I gathered up various screws, wrappers, rags, packets of seeds, receipts, dog toys and leaches, tools, pens and pencils which accumulated there. Since we enter the house through the garage, this surface is the catchall spot for just about everything.
Clutter happens. Decluttering is intentional. Sometimes I remember. Other times a shelf falls off the wall to remind me.
Waite for it... 