GETTING A LESSON IN ACTUAL GARAGE CLEANING

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I was practically a professional when it came to cleaning my garage. I had it down to a science. Every few months, it became painfully obvious that my garage needed a spruce-up, so I would dutifully go in and straighten stuff and sweep the floor and free the lost herd of goats. Usual garage clean-up stuff.

Last week, another clean-up was approaching. (You can always tell, because the bleats get louder and more desperate sounding.) And then it happened. The worst thing that can ever come between a man and his garage tore through my world like a tornado. My wife got involved.

Now, some people may not understand the attachment that a man has for his garage. I call those people "women." But when you get married, you no longer have any rooms. Sure, I get an occasional corner of a room, stuffed deep in the bowels of our home where I can stick a sports memorabilia picture or the like, but for the most part, the closest our decor comes to having sports is if you consider children with umbrellas in a garden a sport.

(Side note: I have a friend whose living room is decorated with memorabilia of his favorite football team. We are pretty sure that he created his wife in a lab somewhere.)

So my garage has become my sanctuary. It is where my Roll Tide flag can fly freely. It is where my old fraternity license plate can hang. It is where my wife parks her car, which hardly seems fair, but I take what I can get.

For a while, my cleaning methods had sufficed. All I had to do was keep a spot clear for my wife's car, and the garage was mine, all mine.

Well, you can imagine my dismay when my wife decided to infuse herself in my mess disposal.

"We need to clean the garage," she said.

"I'm on it," I said.

"No, I don't mean move junk into organized piles of junk. I mean actually clean the garage."

I stared blankly at her. That was, as far I understood, cleaning.

"I mean throw things out," she added.

I started to make a comment about how we could clear up a lot of space if we got that behemoth sport utility vehicle out from the middle of the floor. Wisely, I opted for silence.

So one night, we ventured into the garage to clean. On her terms. I knew that there was no point in fighting it, because she had made it clear that the garage was bothering her, and therefore it was bothering me. I started my usual way, which was to start pulling everything out of the garage and into the driveway. Perhaps large crows would fly off with some of the stuff and save me some effort.

My wife gathered up a bunch of big trash bags, and we started clearing it all out. At my wife's prodding, I began chunking out things left and right. As hard as it was, I forced myself to do away with empty paint cans, cleaner bottles that were sealed shut, and about seven boxes of paperwork from a job I had about 75 years ago. In short, I was throwing out — I can admit it — trash.

After a while, I needed very little additional prodding. I took the approach that I was cleaning up my lair. There would be a dual benefit to this: (1) I would have a clean and revamped place to call my own and (2) my wife would be happy.

It took us about five hours and nearly 20 trash bags, but we eventually purged our garage of an amazing amount of junk. My wife was right. We needed to do an actual cleansing, not a rearrangement. I am glad I agreed to take this step. It is better for all involved. Well, except for the goats.