Garage Files

Sorting through old work documents is a lot like looking at vintage yearbooks. After years in the mothballs, there they are right in front of you: images of your old BFF project that was a soaring success and turned your client into a confidante. The job that started out well but ended awkwardly. And all the characters in between: the projects that consumed your mental faculties for a time, finished up, and graduated from your memory.

A person can accumulate a lot of professional remnants over the course of twenty-six years. That’s what I’m finding as I pare down the physical holdings of my architecture firm in the digital world of construction drawings. When I landed my first architecture job in 1986, every desk in the office was crammed with T-squares, Maylines, pencils, pens, triangles, and ship’s curves. Flat files of blueprints filled entire rooms. Library shelves bulged with product catalogs and code books. I still have a lot of these things. Or at least I did until a few days ago. Now many of my hand-drafting tools, catalogs, and project files wait in holding bins labeled “yard sale,” “charity,” and “shred.”

Moves and babies inspire clutter clearing. These imminent, seismic life-changes make it obvious that the superfluous must go. What’s surprising to me is that the slow burn of the status-quo can also spur big purges. “If you feel stuck,” professional organizers argue, “look to your physical surroundings. Let go of the old and make room for the new.” Every time I’ve followed this line of logic, it’s proved fruitful.  Over the years, I’ve clutter-cleared drawers, closets, rooms, and apartments. Even droves of grab-bags. But never a whole building. Until now.

I’m tackling our garage. It won’t be a side kick to the knee, or a reverse punch to the ribs. I’ll deliver a full-on, whistle-worthy pin to the mat. Expect cries of uncle. When I’m done at the end of July, the garage won’t be organized. It will be empty. The upstairs office. The downstairs reliquary of outgrown toys. I’ll keep the few, most precious treasures. The Sleep Sack and the music box, the figure drawing, and the manuscript. The rest I’ll photograph and bless goodbye.

“Remember this?” My husband Joe holds up a dusty postcard of a Czech castle. He’s sitting cross-legged on the office carpet among piles of emptied file folders and negative sleeves. I’ve recruited him for the project because the garage holds his archive, too. From 2004-2008 we shared the work space upstairs. Six giant Rubbermaid bins contain his professional archive. More hold mementos from his world travels alone, and with me. “Yeah, the countryside around the castle was beautiful, remember the sunflowers we saw from the train?” For a moment we’re back there, in the couchette, dropping the window down to see the fields without the filter of clouded glass. He tosses the card into the “brown paper” recycling bag, and we disembark at our home station. On the platform, two bright-faced children await us. They’re plunked down in red bean bag chairs. “Eewww! A mummy!” the boy says, pointing. “And a zombie!” the girl adds. They scrutinize the video we’ve set up for them to watch while we sort through the piles. We look over, and back, and lurch forward.