...did all this JUNK come from?
Where.. Oh.. Where.. is beyond me!
(we are just getting started here..)
Today was a day for de-cluttering.
The garage.. ~Cowboy's Garage~..
(mine, believe it or not...is spotless give or take a few mouse droppings. Yes, I do have my very own place to park my rig out of the sun, dust and cold...it rarely gets driven so it needs its own hiding place!)
It never ceases to amaze me where all of our junk comes from!
It's not like we purchase things, because we don't!
Each fall & spring, we make a trip to the dump.
(they have special rates for those who like to clean and declutter...
which is NOT our favorite pasttime!)
I understood when we moved here, 3 years ago, while cleaning out and removing the remnants of the previous owners...there was junk.
We cleaned alot! Hauled a horse trailer & pickup full to the dump!
But since then?
This accumulation of junk baffles me!
Neither of us are junk 'collectors' and we've moved soooo many times, we always manage to declutter our lives at that time!
So where does it all come from??
Here, we have the 'dead' panels caused by horses.
They can be so destructive!
(actually these are only TWO of many!)
I posted about destruction..here...
and it happens continously!) 
Here we have two dead mowers...
The 3rd one of the summer, may not make it through another mowing...thank goodness mowing season is coming to a close soon!
We have no small engine repair places available and there is no class at our tiny high school that could repair these as part of their learning experience. One would think with this being a farming/ranch area, these kids would have the 'opportunity' to be taught small or large engine work in order to take over for their parents ...not ! ...These kids plan for greener, more grandious pastures that the world has to offer. (our little community is shrinking each year! There are about 4-6 graduates per year, all achieve scholarships (which I commend them for) and move on!)
Each fall and spring, we also have a fire...when permitted. 
This too, bewilders me! How on earth, can there be so much around here to burn? Two or 3 piles, two times a year?? It is not like we live in a forest, and we certainly don't waste anything!
We burn old feed sacks, baling twine by the tons.
We burn old fallen branches, broken boards from fences and such and the last of the bark from our winter wood pile, even 'acres' of tumbleweeds! There always seems to be so much to burn!
Even our Son, who is a pyro, can always find and add to our piles!
(But. he won't be around much now so guess we have to do our own scouting.)
As you can see...it's pretty darn dry around here. We won't be burning this one or the other one that has been accumulating on the other side, until we get several good rains...generally mid-October.
Now...we have this junk coming out of Cowboy's garage...WHY is it in there??
Maybe he thought he could 'fix' some of it? (he is NOT a fixer kind of guy!)
Maybe he thought he could 'give' it away? Who wants more junk...when we don't! 
OK....why wasn't this blower part of the 'dead' riding mower disposed of when the rest was??
And why didn't that 'dead' sink go to the dump last spring?
This 'dead' weed wacker? ...Last falls trip?
We haven't even got the 'dead' hot water tank out yet..from June 6th!
We also have bits and pieces...BIG pieces...from when Cowboy flipped his horse trailer last winter on an icy bridge (yes, it was empty...thank goodness!)....
He managed to get rid of the crushed trailer....so why not these at the same time??
Go figure!
But Alas!
During the hauling, the lifting, the gathering; coughing dust, spitting cobwebs, and even a few digruntled words...
I DID take the time to stop and smell my roses!
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15 comments:
Don't you just wonder where all the junk comes from??? I swear it appears out of thin air around here too! We have made so many moves and have managed to declutter each time, but since we have been here, the JUNK has found a way into the cargo van and horsetrailer too.....after seeing your post, I think it's time to get off my duff and clean out some JUNK!! The cargo van also holds twenty some years of crap I've been hauling around....I think it needs to finally go too....Hayman teases me that we could set up house keeping with all of the stuff we have in storage!
Decluttering can be a nightmare, but so well worth the effort when you see how it all looks after you've finished.
Great post. It is all true even on small places. MB
How did H>O>W> get all that stuff in that garage? Maybe I don't wanna know. I hope your are getting the scrap metal value for some of it, it would benifit you to look into Salvage yard prices. As far as small engine repair, why don't you call the local school and ask them why they don't impliment a program?
_We just reuse the pannels when they get to that state, who can afford to run out and buy new corral pannels every time one of the horses PMS'es?
__purty roses, how is it that you have roses this late in the year?
___I TOLD YOU TO KEEP JACK FROST UP THERE for a little bit.
Thats a lot of junk, not that I can say anything because I keep everything. I hang onto so much rubbish it's not true and Himself is just as bad.
Love the blog.
If you think your "dead pile" is bad you should see one that 31+ years old. We've in the process of distributing it in hopes of retirement:(
It is always such a good feeling to purge the clutter, isn't it? I get the same feeling around here. I look around, wonder how we accumulated so much junk and question WHY we feel the need to hang on to some of this stuff!
I de-clutter once a year and since I rarely buy anything I always wonder where the heck all the junk comes from. It certainly is good for the soul to lighten up and get rid of all those broken things you know you'll never fix, things friends gave you that you thought you would use and never did, those clothes that don't fit anymore or are so outdated they just might be back in style in the bags and boxes piled in the garage, all those books you keep meaning to read but have yet, 5 years later, to do so etc etc.(Sorry don't live on a farm or ranch so have no odd bits of fences etc to get rid of LOL)
And of course sure as water runs off a duck's back you'll find the very next day a use for something you just got rid of....sheesh
Glad you stopped to smell the roses :-)
I think that the clutter appears from nowhere, it does in our house.. we had a decluttering kitchen day yesterday... seemingly we had more clutter by the time we finished than when we started..
We do this every year as well. My husband is a collector....argh. He even brings home other people junk to add to ours. Makes me crazy! Plus we have been remodeling for seven years and you know the junk that comes from that.......
HA HA Dead panels! We have some of those too! Great job cleaning up! Sometimes I just go crazy with cleaning! My fella says I have OCD!! I am not a keeper or a pack rat! I don't like clutter! I love that you posted about it! Only you could make it sound not as bad as it is. Cleaning it up that is! Plus it make you feel so much better geting up the next morning to a cleaner homestead!
My husband and I have moved so many times that we have gotten really good at getting rid of junk. Rule of thumb- if you haven't used/fixed/found/needed it in the last year, it goes bye-bye!
Wow, we are on the same page! I'm doing the same exact thing, and I had to laugh at your panels, because I was telling Wade, do we get rid of this one panel or keep it, even though it's bent all to hell?... we kept it. Figures. But like you, I took truckloads to the dump. Where the HECK does it all come from?? It's like gremlins steal over in the night and lay all kinds of garbage around. Speaking of garbage, do you ever wonder how 2 or 3 people can generate so much garbage?? I do anyway. At least a bag a day.
*shaking head*
But you did a FINE job cleaning up! Dontcha love it when you can see the floor? lol, I keep going into the "clean" rooms and just taking it all in. And cleaning some more, lol.
Oh, and a question... I love what you've done with Gillespie Galleries... can I steal that? I'd love to put it on my blog too. Love her stuff. I think her pencil work is the next Shoofly. She's really really good.
Let me know if that's ok to steal that! Thank you!!
Wow, you have Big junk!
You know, I wonder about junk. I moved here 2 years ago with what would fit in my Chevy Malibu only. I mailed 6 boxes of teaching materials I had accumulated but all else fit in the car. I was doing a visual/ mental inventory of my apartment yesterday and I'm going to need a truck or leave stuff, and i'll have about 20 boxes to mail stuff, or leave it. It's funny what a person deems important. I wanted my scrapbook stuff in MT and pictures for my walls, but I'm fine with my couch and dishes in storage. Strange...
And sorry for writing my own post in your comment section!
Yeppers.. I always wonder how we have so much crap that seems to grow, luckily we have free dump days all over the county every so often to get cleaned up.
And everyday trash??? don't even get me started!
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