Wednesday, February 13, 2019

Procrastination

After only 3 months in our new house, last night we cleaned out and organized the garage enough to fit my car inside. For three months we put off a job that only took an hour and a half. We felt kind of foolish.



The whole left side of the garage is full of aquariums, aquarium gear, buckets of coral skeleton and substrates, and on and on.... but at least it all makes more sense now and we can walk around and access everything. Most importantly, we can fit my car inside to protect it from the weather. We just paid it off right before buying the house, and it's our only really reliable vehicle. Gregg has a 1996 Ford Ranger truck that probably has over 300,000 miles on it. He uses it for driving to work at the pet store and also for his nearby aquarium maintenance jobs, but we don't trust it for using outside of about a 10 mile radius. But for an old Sanford & Son type work truck, it's awesome...perfect for hauling stuff around and not worrying too much about the paint job or getting dents in it, and it's super cheap to own. The insurance and taxes on it are negligible. There's no real need to keep it inside the garage, since it's in poor condition on the outside. My car, however, is the "main" vehicle and we're trying hard to keep it in excellent condition, inside and out.

Speaking of cleaning out the garage last night, both of our dogs freaked out. They were on the porch watching us move around boxes and rearrange stuff and it seems that they got scared that we might be about to move again. Ginger watched us with big eyes full of reproach, and George started whining and barking at us. We felt so guilty! Ginger, in particular, has had a hard time adjusting to the move and is just finally starting to seem settled in here and happy again. We had no idea that working on the garage would be a triggering event for both of them! The move was apparently more traumatic for them than we knew!

Honestly. we should have gotten the garage cleaned up long before now. There's no excuse at all for it. As soon as we got the inside of the house somewhat in order, the holidays  hit, and after that was over we just wanted to sit around and enjoy the place for awhile. Well, it's time to get back to work! Spring is coming (actually, judging by the weather this month spring is here) and there are a million and one things I want to accomplish in the house and in the yard before the heat of the summer arrives. Do you procrastinate? How do you overcome the tendency? I always wait to the last minute to get things done, and I hate it.


17 comments:

  1. I'm a shocking procrastinator!

    My husband always had his truck in the garage, then he left and we put all the old broken stuff he refused to throw away in the garage so there's a bunch of protected rubbish and the cars are out in the weather. Life is weird at times

    ReplyDelete
  2. As you WELL know, Procrastination is my middle name.
    And isn't whatever we're procrastinating about never as horrible as we think it will be? And doesn't it feel wonderful when we get the job done?
    Your poor pups. My cats go through the same thing whenever we pull out the suitcases but actually, whenever we pull out the suitcases we are going somewhere. Not the same.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I try to get things done as soon as I can but the last two years I have put things off that I shouldn't have. No energy but slowly getting things done. I always got stuff done first so I could enjoy the rest of the day. Learned that from my Mum.
    Your garage looks wonderful.

    cheers, parsnip

    ReplyDelete
  4. My car will be having its annual clean (exterior) in March. I expect the boys have settled in properly by now, the thought of another move must have unsettled them a bit. I hope you explained what you were doing!

    ReplyDelete
  5. No need to justify when you do what around your house, Jennifer - it is your place and will be sorted at your pace :-)
    Aaaw, poor dogs! Of course they had no way of discerning whether you were going to get ready for another move or simply moving things about in the place. They only can rely on what they see happening, and to them it must have looked VERY much like another move.
    Aren't dogs very attached to their owners and happiest when their folks are happy? They will come round and settle in along with you, I am sure!

    ReplyDelete
  6. We like to keep our car in the garage to save scraping ice off in cold weather but at the moment there is no room - it's full of our daughter's furniture!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Always good to get a job done that you have been putting off. Coincidentally I was doing a bit of sorting in my garage yesterday. I do have room for a car but the other half is stuff - and not all mine!

    ReplyDelete
  8. We have never put a car in a garage ! Too much rubbish in there for one thing. I am lucky that mine lives in the car port, so it doesn't get iced up in the cold. ( I am always first out in the morning with the dogs!) Very misty and cold here today,( Harpenden) but sunshine promised for later. The bluebells are starting to come up in the dog walking woods nearby...they are about 2/3 inches high so far!. I shall be off there soon with the schnauzer ( Alexi) and yorkie ( Gemma).

    ReplyDelete
  9. "How do the jury find the defendants Barlow and Barlow?"
    "Guilty your honour!"
    "Take them away! Court dismissed!"

    ReplyDelete
  10. I know this more than most people. My motto is 'Never do today what can be put off until tomorrow'.

    ReplyDelete
  11. "Long before now"??? Oh, please! It took us 4 years to rearrange our 3-car garage in Santa Barbara so ONE car could fit. We moved a year later. You two are amazing!

    ReplyDelete
  12. Since I retired, Mañana has become my middle name. Eventually everything gets done, well, most of it anyway. The days that you enjoyed your new home and the holidays were not wasted. Cleaning out the garage was not as important as that.

    ReplyDelete
  13. I see I am here to explain life to y'all. Do it today so you can do something better tomorrow! Fascinatingly, it is a gene in the female line of my family. It came from my maternal mother and grandmother, skipped my daughters, and is glaringly outstanding in my granddaughters, all three or four of whom are packed for a trip a week ahead.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Well bravo for doing the job, and don't beat yourself up about taking a while to get to it. You've had a really busy couple of months!

    ReplyDelete
  15. I spend a lot of my professional life helping people get over their procrastination.
    Good for you for getting through yours! As is often the case it feels silly in hindsight to have procrastinated at all.

    ReplyDelete
  16. If we talk about the garage, then this place predisposes to procrastination)) I have a large garage and I have long planned to make a small workshop there, but for this I needed to solve the problem of heating. I studied this useful link, but pulled with the execution of my plans for almost 7 months((

    ReplyDelete