How long is it gonna last?

Last night, like most people across the United States revelling in the fun that is St. Patrick's Day, I partied like an Irish rockstar cleaned out the garage. This was something that was long overdue. The garage is traditionally Matt's business, his stomping ground, but that guy had seriously let it go. If you were to compare garages to people, well you could say that the state of this garage was like a homeless bum who'd been sleeping in gutters covered in leaves for warmth and who'd for decades hoarded everything from every Lowe's dumpster in the state of South Carolina.

This thing was atrocious. Tools were spread haphazardly about the entire 2-car space, despite the fact that they have clearly defined and marked homes to live in. The tool bench was piled high with everything from a cheese dip lid to a broken chalkboard to clipboards to sweatshirts to mountains of tools. They all have places, the husband would say... okay... why aren't they where they belong? By 'places' he must mean right there on the tool table, on top of each other. The space beneath the stairs for the camping gear was packed with a wall of I don't know what covered by drop cloths and tarps and spiders and cobwebs. A bike, topped with planters, was jammed between the shopsmith and the wall. Huh. There is enough scrap wood from our addition, which was completed four years ago, to rebuild the city of New Orleans.

VHS Doc Watson movies, socks, a cookie jar, juggling pins, lamp bases, a wooden snowman, a horseshoe set, snowboards, hats, magnadoodles, gourds, a broken hoola hoop. Anything you might find at a hoarding convention... it was in our garage. Dear Jesus. When did Sanford and his son move in?

And so I organized and threw stuff away and swept. I swept up the nails and the corn husks (I know what you're thinking, I thought the same thing), the dry wall dust and the spider webs, the papers and the leaves. Oh yeah. The leaves. I swear to goodness there were leaves littering that garage floor from 1984 and before. Petrified leaves. Hell, petrified trash. There was so much dirt and pieces of stuff ALL OVER the floor. Seriously. I'm pretty sure I swept a family of Irish immigrants out of one corner. They were reluctant to leave, but I wrenched them from their stronghold. And as I was sweeping, I started forming questions. Mainly, "Are you kidding me?"

Other questions:
Why are jumper cables hanging on the wall with the extension cords? Shouldn't they be in the car?
Why do we have enough wood glue to put Noah's Ark together?
Why do we have more caulk than Lowe's? Are we wholesalers for them?
What is this?
What is that?
Seriously, what is that?
Do you dehydrate bananas with the peels on them? No? Then explain this.  

In the end, I got it all worked out. Everything is in it's place, and I now can find anything that I may need from the garage. It's orderly and safe and I don't mind going in there. I've even gone into the garage just because I can, because it doesn't give me a panic attack to look at it anymore. And as I type this and reflect over the process of cleaning and organizing that space, I can't help but form another question.

How long is it gonna last?