Trina Machacek: Storing equipment and everything else

I feel very lucky that I have space to store stuff I need to have space to store. Well, that’s a circular mouthful. Oh, I can always use more storage. An extra shelf. An additional closet. More wall space in the garage. A second or third garage. A storage building or three. A few acres to line up all the treasures I have drug home while doing my favorite pastime, Arkee-junkin’. It’s like being an archeologist but in left over garbage, uh, treasures from years gone by. Nothing like a golden statue of King Tut. Think more along the lines of tin cans, broken bottles and an occasional set of old wagon seat springs. Then your junkin’ treasures come home. Oh that’s when storage comes into play doesn’t it?

I was reminded a few days ago of some things that I have in storage that I miss. So I bundled up in a heavy quilted shirt, sweatshirt, hoodie, scarf, mittens and boots, because it is the dead of winter, still, and traversed out to the garage to find a few wonders of my yesterday world. Then I remembered I should only go out to travel down memory lane in the summertime. It was cold in the garage. It was dark and cold. It was fun to be out in the middle of yesterday without anything else to do. Usually when I travel the way back machine I am looking for something and have no time to just enjoy the journey. I was lucky enough to find an ole milk house heater that I could plug in while I went through a few boxes of yesterday.

This really isn’t about what I came across. It’s more about where, how and why things are stored. Let me set the stage. On one whole wall of my garage, before we, OK I, before I had any time to start filling the garage with treasures, my other half had the forethought to put up metal shelves. A lot of metal shelves. Then we bought some see-through plastic totes to fit on those shelves. Oh, so many plastic totes. Then we began to fill those shelves with full plastic totes. It was so pretty to see. All organized and some totes were even labeled. Those were his totes. Mine, because I am so full of myself, are not labeled. After all, I would ALWAYS remember what was in each one I filled with such amazing treasures. HA!

As I was standing out in the garage all bundled up I looked for the tote with the dishes I wanted to bring back into my home. Well to say the least I found old clothes, old Levis, some gardening pots and a million other things before I found the dishes. As I was up on a ladder putting a tote back on a shelf I turned around and looked at the sight of the rest of the garage. All I could think was, “I need a bigger garage.”

How is it that even though I have pretty much stopped Arkee-junkin’ my storage space is still filling up? Oh I love it all. Don’t get me wrong. Seeing empty spaces makes me feel empty. So I love to see filled spaces.

Equipment has always been a big thing to store. When you think of what a farmer pays for equipment it only makes sense to put it under cover. For many years most of all the equipment in this valley was left outside. Sunshine to freezing days and nights. Some of it still is. Most of the outside pieces and parts are the things you drag behind tractors to work the fields. But for the most part many of the huge, expensive pieces of equipment today are stored in barns. Then there’s the little equipment, lawn mowers and sprayers and the most fun and used equipment, the 4-wheelers, are stored inside. In little spaces and hooked up to trickle chargers over winter. Waiting to be turned loose come the first tufts of green in lawns and along the ditch banks and road ways.

We are not so different from the old timers of the 1800s. I am picking up, storing and treasuring their trash piles. All such cool stuff. Their new turned to old and now their old is my new. Good thing I have a big outside as my treasure chest to go Arkee-junkin’.

Trina Machacek lives in Eureka. Her books are available wherever you buy books or email her at itybytrina@yahoo.com to buy signed copies.