I have classified documents in my garage

Attention FBI, I have top secret, classified documents stored in my garage.

Please, come take a look. They need to be removed and put in their proper place.

Actually, I don’t have anything top secret or classified. I just want help cleaning my garage and the FBI seems eager to do the work. At least they’re interested in snooping in the garages, basements, and attics of current and former occupants of the White House.

I think the most classified papers I have in my two-car storage bin are those with Social Security numbers and other personal identifiers on them. I do have boxes and boxes of papers with classifieds in them, but those are newspapers and the classifieds are ads.

Every so often my wife Sandy suggests that we need to clean and reorganize the garage. That’s her secret code for “let’s get rid of more of Joe’s stuff.” We’re both packrats and have plastic bins full of stuff we just can’t seem to part with. A lot of it is sentimental (semi-mental?) and that’s OK.

Decluttering experts say if you hold an object you should ask if it still brings you joy. If it does, keep it. If not, toss it. A lot of my remaining keepsakes do bring me joy. I have very fond memories of my 1970s Lone Ranger actions figures, old posters, my Charlie McCarthy ventriloquist doll, my old high school football jerseys, and tons of other childhood trinkets.

I do have several boxes of old photos and film negatives that I need to sort through, along with paring down old newspapers to include just the ones with important stories I wrote. I think the thought of sitting down to sort all those things out gives me paralysis of analysis and an aversion to just dealing with the mess.

Please note that I did not mention how much of the stuff in the garage is my wife’s. To her credit, she has been slowly consolidating and eliminating stuff, but there is still a lot to do. I know we will soon spend a weekend plowing through the garage because Sandy has been dropping the usual hints.

“We need to clean out the garage.” “We need to get this mess organized.” “I can’t find anything in here.” And those are just the obvious hints. It will go on that way for a few weeks or months until a rare spot opens on the calendar without any commitments.

In the summer, it’s too hot to work in the garage and in the winter it’s too cold and wet. Guess what? Spring is coming. That’s another clue. Even the FBI couldn’t miss that one.

Whenever I start going through boxes in the garage, I get sentimental. So may memories come flooding back. I also get frustrated because there are lots of projects to finish and I don’t have the time.

I keep telling myself that someday I’m going to have a new house with my own workshop or man cave where I can proudly display my collection of collections and no longer have to park boxes in the place where the cars should be.

There is a saying that you should have what you want, but want what you have. My problem is I want what I have. I just don’t need so much of it. I know that when I die my kids are not going to want all of this stuff either. Some future historian or archeologist may find my garage full of stuff to be a real gold mine, but my family not so much.

So what’s a guy to do? My solution was to bait the FBI, but I doubt they bite. If they do I’ll have more fodder for another column and another column to add to my collection.

Joe Southern is the managing editor of the Wharton Journal-Spectator and the East Bernard Express. He can be reached at news@journal-spectator.com.