Breaking in the Garage

No, not breaking into the garage. Breaking it in!

Last night was the first that both our vehicles slept in our garage together (automotive romance?!). We just this past weekend got the last of the boxes out of the garage. Many we unpacked and put their contents away; some we stacked in the storage room in the house until we can unpack them at a later date. In any case, we needed to get the garage empty and available for use by our vehicles before the snow piles up any deeper.

(Yes, we have a little bit of snow. In October.)

So, Susan has had the van in the garage since this weekend. I was delaying putting the Explorer in the garage until I could have its oil leak fixed. The mechanic can't find the leak, though, and neither can I (it hasn't leaked since the initial leaking incident last week), so I happily drove into my stall in the garage last night, put a sheet of cardboard under the engine to detect/catch future leaks, shut the door behind me, and enjoyed the sight of our two vehicles side by side in the same garage. Then, I walked directly from the garage into the house.

This is rather mundane to most, but it's a big deal to me. Our previous house had a one-car, detached garage. The van lived in the garage, and the Explorer sat on the driveway in the winter (where it got covered with ice and snow and required plugging in if it was to start on cold mornings) and on the street in the summer (under a tree that was a favorite perching spot for neighborhood birds with full bowels).

Not that it was paradise for whoever drove the van, either. There was still the walk through the treacherous winter weather to get to or from the house. Also, the garage had space between the foundation and the lower portion of the walls in several places, making it not a very weather-proof structure.

Our current garage is wonderful: finished walls, painted floor, plenty of storage cabinets and work bench space, wall hooks, room for parking the snow blower and the large trash bin, room for both vehicles, and direct passage into the house. If your garage offers you the same features, take a moment to appreciate what you've got.