Cleaning the barn

I found myself sweeping and reorganizing the stuff in my garage the other day. I know it sounds a little compulsive but it was a ritual taught to me by my late wife Martha. When we lived in New Hampshire and actually had a barn she would march out twice a year and clean it to within an inch of its life. I would follow and do as I was told all the while thinking, “It’s a barn for Christ’s sake”!

Well, it wasn’t just a barn in reality. We parked a car in one side of it to get it out of bad winter weather so that area could get quite gritty to say the least. The other side had barn doors and behind them was screening for an area we used as a sort of screened porch. It’s a French-Canadian thing: sitting in the garage or barn in the summer. And there was a hummock that could be strung across one barn door to be lazed in of an evening. No one wants to sit for a BBQ supper in a dirty, dusty barn!

I spend a considerable portion of my time now-a-days in the garage here in the good weather. I have a workshop there and do any fixing and painting of things, like windows and old wooden boats, which I can drag in out of the hot sun. So it’s actually nice to get organized and clean up.

Either that or it’s another habit I’m finding hard to break.