There’s a tropical depression near Galveston, Texas, and it’s wreaking havoc on the weather forecasts in my area. Today marks the second day this week that rain was predicted, yet the sun has been shining nearly all day. That’s also two days this week that I could have gone fishing.

Instead, I spent most of my day in the garage.

I managed to clean off one of my workbenches and rearrange the battery chargers for my power tools. It may not sound like much, but in a garage-cleaning project, that qualifies as significant progress.

Then there was the plastic storage tub.

This particular tub is full of 32 years’ worth of items that came from my office when I retired in 2018. Apparently, when I retired, I decided that Future Tim would sort through it someday. Well, Future Tim finally showed up.

I spent some time going through the contents, throwing away things that clearly needed to be trashed and even a few things that I wanted to keep but realistically didn’t need anymore. Unfortunately, the tub is still just as full as when I started. It’s going to require a dedicated day of sorting, organizing, and deciding which memories deserve valuable storage space.

I didn’t want to spend that much time on it today because I’ve got plenty of other cleaning to do. The tub will still be there when I’m finished.

Actually, now that I think about it, that’s probably how we got into this mess in the first place.

Today was trash day, and the city came by and emptied our garbage can. I’m glad they did because I was officially out of room. Based on the rate I’m going, I’m fairly certain I’ll have it filled back up by tomorrow afternoon.

I’m slowly making progress. Nobody else may be able to see it yet, but I can.

I also found some storage bins that attach to a pegboard above one of my workbenches. I bought them quite a while back with the intention of organizing small hobby items like key rings, hooks, picture hangers, and other odds and ends.

There was just one problem.

The holes in my pegboard are too small.

So tomorrow’s project will involve a power drill and a drill bit as I enlarge every hole needed to mount those bins. Once they’re installed, they should free up a fair amount of space in my toolbox.

As if that weren’t enough excitement, I’ve also discovered that I apparently own enough sanding disks to open a small sanding-disk dealership. Much like my tape measures, they seem to be scattered throughout the garage in random locations.

To solve that problem, I found a file online and started printing a storage box with my 3D printer to organize them. The printer has come in handy several times for projects around the house, and this looks like another one of those occasions.

I’m also finding drill bits everywhere. Different sizes. Different styles. Some I remember buying. Others appear to have materialized out of thin air. For now, they’re all going into a temporary storage bin until I can sort through them properly.

So far, this garage-cleaning adventure has been surprisingly interesting. I keep finding things I bought years ago and never used. Some of them I had completely forgotten I owned.

At this point, cleaning the garage feels less like housework and more like a treasure hunt.

It’s kind of like Christmas in June—except all the gifts are things I bought myself and forgot about years ago.