Our backyard has never looked great. When we bought the house, I was fully aware the yard was a fixer upper. It has sat unchanged and only minimally maintained for decades. In contrast, the inside of the house was in pretty good shape, and had a lot of improvements done recently. I preferred this. I’m not a big fan or expert in flooring, but I do love a good and personalized garden. I wanted a yard where instead of ripping out decent landscaping to get what I wanted, I could just start from scratch.

One of the eyesores in our yard (besides the meatball shrubs that were promptly removed), was an old shed in the back. It had a bit of rustic charm to it, expect for the fact that it was filled with thirty year old garbage and leaning about twenty degrees to the west. At first, I couldn’t even comfortably get in the shed because the lean prevented the door from opening all the way.

Doors are easily removed, so I popped off the door and started sorting things. There were some cool finds in the shed–the most interesting was a set of vintage bikes. A lot of it was simply old garbage that should have just been taken to the dump rather than stored in a shed for decades. There were blanket and other fabric things covered in cat urine, old motors, air conditioning units, cardboard, jars (and not cool ones), torn up flooring, and even a sink. Everything in the shed was placed outside the shed for eventual disposal, free-cycling. or re-purposing.

Joe spent a Saturday ripping off old boards, and finally, knocking the shed over. No more shed. Happy day. Except…

We are now living in a junk yard. At least before all the garbage was cheerfully disguised as a rustic shed. Now it just looks like garbage.

Our city does spring clean-up with dumpsters and double garbage days in a month, and we are planning to dispose of much of the junk then. We also want to re-use some of the wood for the chicken coop, which is why we torn it down now and not later. I’ve already free-cycled some items (I had about 5 people in a half hour clamoring for an old window and screen door), and we will spend the next month sorting garbage.

I thought I was a gardener not a garbage sorter, but sometimes the jobs just overlap.