If there has been a single constant in my adult life it has been a complete lack of storage.  I am not a packrat by any stretch of the imagination, I find throwing things away and “lightening the load” to be very liberating, but at the end of the day you need a place to store the stuff that you actually need and use.

The first house that my wife and I owned in Tucson had a 1 bay carport, no enclosed garage of any kind.  Since I have almost always had a project vehicle or some kind, I was constantly fighting the storage war.  During those 15+ years in that house, it usually meant renting an over priced storage unit near by and every time I needed something like my air compressor I would have to make the drive over, get it, take it home and use it, and then return it to the storage unit when I was done.  After we sold that house we lived in two different rental houses that had full 2 car garages, which were great for being able to store things, but because of the garage being used for storage, I could never actually park my daily driver in the garage.

When we started house hunting in the Olympia area, we had a couple must haves on our list, first and foremost was a little bit of land and some isolation from our neighbors.  Second on my list was a large garage/shop, we ended up with the first, but the place we bought had a standard sized 2 car garage.  Since the new place sits on 2 acres, and we are also doing a vegetable garden each year, this simply means that we have even more, and larger items, that need a home.  In this case a riding lawn mower and a rear tine rototiller.  Of course they ended up in the garage and yet again I had a two car garage that I couldn’t actually park my daily driver in.

That all changed this last week with the addition of a brand new 10′ x12′ storage / garden shed.  Not only have I been able to move all of those large items out of the garage, I have actually managed to park my Tacoma in the garage.

It’s a little tight in there, but they do fit, and the Tacoma will have a roof over her head for winter which is just around the corner.

Now I just need to work on the second constant in my adult life, the lack of a dedicated workshop. 🙂