Hey Dude . . . Where's my Brain?

I swear I spend at least 50% of my life looking for things.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not a slob. Actually, I'm a bit obsessive about organization. The problem is, I have no time to organize anything. When I do, I do such a good job that I still can't find anything.

Last fall I spent weeks painting the inside of my garage. I threw away a LOT of stuff, even duplicates of shovels and rakes, etc. I then bought some nice wall mount cabinets designed specifically for garage storage. It was so exciting! I was able to fit all the dog stuff on one shelf. The bottom cabinets held all of our car stuff. Another held all of our gardening stuff. Extra laundry soap went in another and soda and water went in still another one.

I also bought slatwalls to hold hooks for all of our normal garage stuff. The rakes and shovels had their own hooks. Garden hoses hung on special brackets on the slatwall. Another section held all of our household cleaning implements such as brooms and mops. I even bought bicycle lifts so that our bicycles could be hoisted up towards the ceiling when not in use. My goal was not to have anything actually on the garage floor.

For my husband, I mounted a paper towel holder on the wall near his car door so he could reach them when necessary. For the kids, I bought baskets that hung on the slatwall for all of their outside toys and sports paraphernalia.

When my project was complete, the neighbors would drool when they saw the inside of our garage. My friend across the street, who also works full time and has two kids, hates me. Her husband is a neat freak and asked her why she couldn't do something like that with THEIR garage. Whoops.

Anyway, I felt such a sense of accomplishment. Everything I needed was within reach. All of the clutter was gone, replaced by necessary items all in their places. Could I be any closer to heaven?

Soon, the euphoria ended. Little by little the garage seemed to have a mind of it's own. The kids would get their bikes and park them near the back of the garage until they used them again. Extra 'stuff' would end up on the floor on either side of the garage like toys, papers, and anything that fell out of the car when the door was opened. Little by little, the space between the two cars, which had been empty not long before, starting accumulating boxes and more stuff so we had to walk carefully around it to get to the car.

Worst of all, I can't find a damned thing.

Where's the extra laundry detergent? Don't know.
Is the bee spray in the cabinet? Nope.
Do we still have a swiffer? No. Can't find it.
Where's the cooler? No idea.
You said there was tons of soda for our party. Where is it? Not in the garage.

The whole organization thing is a scam. If it seems too good to be true, it probably doesn't exist.

I wanted to clean the garage again this fall and get it back to the way it was.

Unfortunately, there's no place to put all of our stuff.