My husband and I have shared almost everything for forty years. The garage was never one of them.
The garage is his space. I made peace with that a long time ago, and I don’t fuss about what’s in it.
So I was surprised one evening in September when he set down his coffee cup and said, “Will you help me with the garage?”
He had a reason. Last winter, my car sat in the driveway because the second side of the garage was full. Every cold morning, he went out in his slippers to scrape the ice off my windshield.
“I’m not doing that again this year,” he said. “I want your car inside before the snow.”
We spent the last four Saturday mornings out there together. We never lifted anything heavy, we never climbed a ladder, and we didn’t have one argument. (I’m still a little proud of that last part.)
If your garage has filled up over the years and you don’t know where to begin, this is the order we used. It’s how I’d start decluttering the garage after 60 all over again.
Our Rules Before We Touched a Thing
Before the first Saturday, we sat at the kitchen table and agreed on a few rules. They kept us safe, and they kept us friends.
His Things Are His Call
This was the most important rule for us. If something was his, he decided whether it stayed or went. If something was mine, I decided.
I could ask, “Do you still use this?” But once he answered, I let it go. (I wrote more about how we got here in my post on