The Downsizing Project

Monty has been cleaning and rearranging the garage and is now tackling the storage shed on our back lot.  He is sorting into separate piles of Toss out, Goodwill and OMG would you look at that.

The first pile is the usual: a wheelbarrow with a broken handle,  a bucket with a hole in it, you know the stuff you save thinking someday you might repair it.  The second pile is more interesting with slightly singed hot dog holders to use over the campfire, folding lawn chairs that have seen better days, a gently used suitcase that still has a trip or two in it.  

The OMG pile is a story of Monty’s life: report cards from second grade through high school,  (even then he was an overachiever!), the hotrod model he built in junior high, a partially finished balsa wood  model boat.  Since I’ve never known Monty to leave a project unfinished, I’m guessing this model was started before he discovered girls were more fun.  That can be the only answer.

There is a bright yellow Yamaha motocross riding jersey and also the T-shirt given to riders in the last Barstow to Vegas desert race.  An interesting box with a world map on the lid, slightly outdated, containing about fifty finishing pins given to motocross racers.  Carefully packed in a suit bag is his dad’s favorite pinstripe suit.  Monty said when his dad passed away in the 70’s Monty tried the suit on and it fit him perfectly.  Some things you just can’t part with.

There are two sets of Captain bars for his dress blues, when he served in the army in Ethiopia in the ’60’s.  Along with the bars there is a box of unworldly looking squiggly coral that looks like beautiful fingers from the Red Sea where he used to snorkel and fish.  Lovely sand dollars he bleached and polished.

Monty grew up in Colorado so it wasn’t surprising to find a pair of ski bibs. He hasn’t used those bibs in the thirty years he’s been in Arizona.  But I guess you never know when there might be a chance to ski here in the desert.  Always be prepared, which brings us to the boy scout  badges and pins in the bottom of the treasure chest.   

In dental school  Monty was friends with a fellow student who was an avid fisherman.  Jim taught Monty how to make a fly rod and sure enough there it was in the back of the shed, carefully wrapped in newspaper from the ’70’s.

Digging a bit deeper is the Action Packer we used to carry on the ATV.  Inside is the solar shower, oh, that shower brings back such fond memories.  While out camping we’d lay the shower up on the hood of the truck early in the morning. We’d ride and hike all day and come back to camp the afternoon, string the shower up in a tree and have the best showers ever.  A margarita before dinner and we were happy campers.  We’ve wondered what happened to the small collapsible hibachi  we carried camping.  Well, here it is, I bet we can still put it to good use. 

The clean out took longer than Monty expected, I think it had something to do with the OMG pile of treasures.  Now it’s decision time, everything in that pile is priceless but we are attempting to downsize.  Hmmm maybe he’ll just keep it, after all he made a big dent tossing out those beat up lawn chairs and a bucket with a hole in it.