My profound thanks to the 17: Kyle, Aldon, Lisa, Camrun, Tammy, Heather, Kari, Lindsay, Dennis, Tom, Dani, Stephen, Justine, Logan, Carson, Mom, & Dad!!
WOW! I'll say it backwards, "WOW"! Last weekend I was blessed to have 17 awesome people come over and help me / GTD tackle some overdue projects and turn them into overwhelming PROGRESS! I can't even begin to express my gratitude to this awesome army of people that came out and did more in 2 days than I could have done in 2 months! From the bottom of my heart: Thank you! Thank you!! Thank you!!! Soooooo! Muuuuch! God bless you all!!!
THE MAIN PROJECTS:
<> RECLAIM THE GARAGE
<> RESTORE THE SHIPPING CONTAINER
<> REVAMP THE SHED
<> REMOVE THE TURPENTINE
<> AND ANYTHING ELSE WE COULD DO
The GTD Homebase (AKA: my house) had become an episode of "Hoarders". Over the past 3 years I've accumulated:
<> A lot of materials & tools for my home renovations.
<> During that same time we moved all of the GTD gear & equipment out of rental storage and into my garage, inside my house, and throughout the yard.
<> A few months ago a shipping container that held more of our equipment was generously donated to GTD. (Side story: The problem was that the shipping container and the equipment inside had all been contaminated with turpentine several years ago when I didn't fully tighten the cap on the turpentine can and it all evaporated into the sealed up shipping container. It got into everything! A few months ago we threw away about 75% of the outdated & overly contaminated equipment that was inside the shipping container and tried to salvage the remaining 25% that was still useable. For the past 4 months that 25% has been sitting outside airing out and the shipping container has been wide open airing out. We applied vinegar to everything including the shipping container over the past month. And praise God, it worked! The turpentine beast was vanquished!!)
<> And in addition to all the items mentioned above, this has been a season of wonderful growth and GTD has acquired a lot of new equipment (GLORY TO GOD & THANK YOU AMAZING DONORS!!!). That new equipment had to be stored somewhere so it was added to the garage, the house, and the yard.
ALL ADDED TOGETHER I was drowning in stuff!! Paralyzed by too much and too many as well as not enough time. Hello Hoarders! You can call me Lemont from Sanford & Son!! With our recent influx of Caregiving hours I was completely paralyzed from making any significant progress. The mountain of stuff and countless projects was a bit overwhelming. So I asked for help. Aaaaaand WOW!! I got more than I could have hoped for or imagined!! 3 awesome people showed up for 2 days (Wed & Thur) to get the ball rolling. And then 17 more awesome people came out over 2 more days last Saturday & Sunday!! Aaaaaand WOW, they were highly motivated nonstop hard working beautiful souls!!! The impact they made left this wordy guy nearly speechless!
The results speak for themselves! The garage has been reclaimed as a fitness area, workshop, laundry area, and lite storage area. No more narrow hoarder aisles to walk thru! The shipping container has been restored to our main equipment storage area! The shed has been revamped to a consolidated storage area! All the turpentine has been removed from contaminated items! 20 sleeping bags were picked up, washed, dried, and returned! Lunches were served! And 6 garbage cans worth of leaves have been sucked up and removed from around our kayaks & other equipment! THEY GOT SOOOOOOOO MUCH DONE!!! And with fun-loving attitudes!! It was a lot of hard work, but they made it feel like a few days of fun! I'm beyond grateful to these awesome and amazing people for all their hard work, help, support, encouragement, and love (in both words and in deeds)!!
Everything is "rough draft" organized... the next step is the "fine tune" organizing =)
It's a new season of getting things done! More volunteer work days coming next week =)
