When my wife and I began the search to find our first house we sat down and talked about what things we both wanted in a home. Amazingly, we agreed on almost everything including a two-car garage that would actually be used for its intended purpose: to house our cars. For the last seven years we’d been living in a rental house that had an attached garage, but after a while the junk slowly squeezed the cars out. We were determined not to repeat the scenario when we moved. Unfortunately, things didn’t work out that way.
Like many families we began moving things into the new garage before the house even closed, and also like many families, much of that stuff was still there years later. In fact, it looked like a long neglected storage unit until one day when my wife marched into the dining room with my daughters in tow and announced that today was the day the garage was returned to its rightful occupants. She was determined to clean the place out and to my surprise, she did a great job by utilizing technology in ways I never would have thought of.
First she sat down at the computer while the girls went out and took some measurements. She created a rendering of the garage in a 3-D modeling program according to the numbers my girls gave her, then added the existing shelving, a built-in workbench, and the two cars. From there she was able to calculate how much storage capacity we had and what could reasonably go where. Then they emptied the structure completely.
My wife sent me to purchase some modular shelving units and totes, along with a hand-held thermal label printer. This nifty little gadget came in real handy in helping my wife organize the sporting equipment and label it by type. She used a laser-level to hang the brackets for the modular shelving; a task I had to do in the bedrooms with a tape measure and a plumb line when we first moved in. I must say, was blown-away by her work. I had never seen my wife do these kinds of thing with the tools she was using.
The icing on the cake had to have been taking inventory for our insurance company using a digital camera. As each item was put away in its new place, a digital picture was taken and notes made about the item’s age and condition. The notes were added to the pictures later on using image editing software on the computer. Pictures were also taken of both vehicles as they sat in the garage, providing evidence that they fit comfortably should our auto insurer ever fuss about it. Finally, when the job was complete my wife used the video feature of the camera to do a complete 360 scan of the entire garage. Awesome!
Now we have a clean and organized garage with plenty of room for our cars, it’s inventoried in case we ever have a fire or break-in, and I’m happy to say that we’ve maintained it for almost four years. Thanks to the hard work and ingenuity of my lovely wife and two daughters.
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