HoosierBuddy
Well-known member
Saturday my wife and I made the 30 minute drive to my Mom's house. My boyhood home we moved into when I was 6.
It was locked up tight. Mom moved to a nearby town to live with my brother when she couldn't live on her own anymore. She had a house sitter (AKA renter who didn't pay rent) live there for a couple of years. The time has come to get it cleaned out, fix whatever issues need fixing and move to the next family.
The wife headed inside to start on cleaning out closets. A daunting task as every closet is packed floor to ceiling. Living 50+ years in one home gives a lot of time for stuff to accumulate. Who was it that said, "The things that you own end up owning you"? Man so much stuff.
I started in the garage. Specifically I started at the workbench. My father's workbench. I have vague memories of him building this bench in the attached 2 car garage while the house was still being built in 1969. It was just a wide heavy bench with cabinet doors to hide a shelf and storage on the cement floor underneath. A piece of pegboard in back to hang tools and he was done. The only real modification done since then was one I made in the late 80's. I bought him a small Sears vise for Father's Day and (with his permission) drilled holes and mounted the vise solidly through the 2" thick top.
We lost Dad about 15 years ago. Mom ended up marrying and losing a preacher to a heart attack. A couple of years after that she married a retiree and then lost him a in a tragic accident. I don't think either of them used the workbench much.
The preacher wasn't much of a "fixer". The second guy was pretty much a mechanical genius, but by the time he came along Mom had been using the workbench for "catch all storage". The bench was piled high with boxes and bags and loose flotsam and jetsam. The storage cabinets were packed to bursting with Christmas Decorations, groceries, pharmaceuticals, bags of boxes of tissue paper, carpet remnants, cords to long forgotten VHS machines, Long forgotten VHS Machines, rusty hardware, brand new hardware, sheets of forever stamps, general trash, a roll of electric fence wire, remote controls to (I have no idea)....and beneath all that a few of Dad's tools.
Anyway it took 2 hours. 95% of it went into trash bags I set on the curb. The milk crate on top went home with me. It contained a few Dad's tools and the Forever Stamps. Dad was a hard guy to please, but I think I he would have said it was a good job.
2 of his wood clamps are (even now) clamped onto a cutting board I'm gluing up for my wife for Christmas. That would probably make him happier than cleaning off his workbench.
It was locked up tight. Mom moved to a nearby town to live with my brother when she couldn't live on her own anymore. She had a house sitter (AKA renter who didn't pay rent) live there for a couple of years. The time has come to get it cleaned out, fix whatever issues need fixing and move to the next family.
The wife headed inside to start on cleaning out closets. A daunting task as every closet is packed floor to ceiling. Living 50+ years in one home gives a lot of time for stuff to accumulate. Who was it that said, "The things that you own end up owning you"? Man so much stuff.
I started in the garage. Specifically I started at the workbench. My father's workbench. I have vague memories of him building this bench in the attached 2 car garage while the house was still being built in 1969. It was just a wide heavy bench with cabinet doors to hide a shelf and storage on the cement floor underneath. A piece of pegboard in back to hang tools and he was done. The only real modification done since then was one I made in the late 80's. I bought him a small Sears vise for Father's Day and (with his permission) drilled holes and mounted the vise solidly through the 2" thick top.
We lost Dad about 15 years ago. Mom ended up marrying and losing a preacher to a heart attack. A couple of years after that she married a retiree and then lost him a in a tragic accident. I don't think either of them used the workbench much.
The preacher wasn't much of a "fixer". The second guy was pretty much a mechanical genius, but by the time he came along Mom had been using the workbench for "catch all storage". The bench was piled high with boxes and bags and loose flotsam and jetsam. The storage cabinets were packed to bursting with Christmas Decorations, groceries, pharmaceuticals, bags of boxes of tissue paper, carpet remnants, cords to long forgotten VHS machines, Long forgotten VHS Machines, rusty hardware, brand new hardware, sheets of forever stamps, general trash, a roll of electric fence wire, remote controls to (I have no idea)....and beneath all that a few of Dad's tools.
Anyway it took 2 hours. 95% of it went into trash bags I set on the curb. The milk crate on top went home with me. It contained a few Dad's tools and the Forever Stamps. Dad was a hard guy to please, but I think I he would have said it was a good job.
2 of his wood clamps are (even now) clamped onto a cutting board I'm gluing up for my wife for Christmas. That would probably make him happier than cleaning off his workbench.
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