Every now and then a bloke must draw a line in the sand, say “enough is enough” and sort some stuff out.

I’m talking of course about the annual clean-out of his garage.

Such an
occurrence took place at my humble abode just the other week. It would be fair to say it was rather therapeutic.

Basically, what happened was I found myself with a bit of spare time up my sleeve courtesy of the fact I was well organised in advance, for a change, ahead of a scheduled three days out of town on business.

The catalyst proved to be a visit from the Boomerang Child looking for some toddler books she could not find at her house and wondered if they could possibly be at ours.

I was 99.793 per cent certain the books were definitely somewhere in the depths of my garage and had been for ages… along with the countless other items we have stored for our four kids over the years.

If you have nurtured a similar crop of hoarding-inclined children, you will know exactly what I mean.

It does not seem to register with them that they might, in fact, be able to store stuff in their own garage and/or spare bedrooms. I suppose there is comfort in having an anchor point at their own private hotel and storage facility.

Anyway.

Over the years we’ve gradually been able to whittle away at the boxes to the point where the other day I moved one and actually saw the concrete floor of the garage beneath.

Such was the sudden introduction of light to a hard surface covered and in darkness for years, I swear I heard it give a little shocked gasp. I’m sure you get my drift.

The Boomerang Child is the last one to still have a bit with us but before she could change her mind or say “I’ll think about it” I’d loaded up four boxes (insert evil laugh here) and sent her on her way.

As I say, that got me started on a major reclamation of a space project.

For the next few days if I wasn’t donating goods to charity I was at the dump or negotiating a sale online.

Eventually, the day before I headed away, I surveyed a clean and newly swept garage which looked like it might, after all, be able to take a car or two.

Such was the moment of euphoria I burst into song, delighting in the sound available in a freshly cleared garage when there are no items around to break up the sound waves.

I was still thinking about it as I drove back home three days later, contemplating whether I should go and buy one of those shiny new, organiser things for your tools and the nuts, bolts and nails you have stored in ugly boxes and old jam jars on the bench.

Imagine my surprise then as I pulled into my driveway and went to my garage.

Expecting to find a facility offering enough space to swing the proverbial cat and acoustics the finest opera houses of the world could be proud of, I found something quite the opposite.

The empty space had been taken up by an entire setup of gym equipment.

And I’m not talking just a pair of dumbells here. I’m talking benches, weights, cable machines with pulleys and even a rowing machine.

Puzzled – and a little peeved if the truth be told – I sought an explanation from my beloved.

It seems she hadn’t the heart to tell me over the phone during one of our chats while I was away, such had been my delight at finally clearing out the garage and getting some space back.

Sheepishly she tells me the gym equipment has been gifted to No1 son – currently residing in the South Island – by my one-time gym junkie brother-in-law, and she’s agreed to store it.

Apparently, my brother-in-law grew tired of it taking up all the space in his garage and decided to get rid of it.

And who better to give it to than his favourite nephew?

And what better time to ship it out of his garage and into mine than when I just happened to be out of town for a few days? A term which sounds a lot like the phrase “Sneakly Blugger” comes to mind.

Anyway. What can you do? It wasn’t like it was the first time I’d had to store stuff for the kids. Besides, No1 son would be finishing up down south in the not-too-distant future and hopefully moving closer. I could get it to him then and reclaim my garage space. Again.

Or at least that’s what I thought.

It turns out we may end up looking after it for a bit longer than just a few months.

The other thing Mrs P hadn’t told me was that No1 son is headed to England after his southern stint ends and won’t be back for another year.