After enjoying lunch together, Tim’s wife asked him to get something out of the attic. She was looking for a small box of porcelain figurines saved from her great-grandmother.

The attic was not a place Tim frequently visited. The only way to access it was climbing up an old metal ladder on the side of the house. In fact, it had been several years since he had to enter this repository of old and largely forgotten valuable and not-so-valuable items.

After hunting through half-open boxes and moving countless items around, he found the figurines and carefully brought them down. As he handed them to his wife, he kept thinking about all that junk in the attic. Even though he knew better, he could not resist the urge to comment about how much stuff was sitting in the attic that no one would ever look at or want. Without really thinking, he pointed up to the attic and made a sly comment about the junk becoming a problem for their kids one day.

Tim’s wife was not happy with his comments. He could tell from her facial expressions that maybe he had crossed the line with his complaints.

She pointed out the window and said, “I can go out and can find things in the machine shed that you haven’t used in more than 20 years and have no intentions of ever using again. Perhaps you should do some cleaning yourself before complaining about the attic.”

Tim was prepared with a witty comeback, but his common sense finally prevailed, and he decided to be quiet. Without much effort Tim found himself on the way to the machine shed, having ruined any chance of having an enjoyable afternoon in the house with his wife. He was confident his machine shed was not filled with useless things, and he was determined to prove it to his wife.

Tim’s machine shed served as his office, shop and storage unit. On his way in he stopped at the office and pulled a can of pop out of the refrigerator. After checking the markets and scanning through a few channels on the TV, he ventured out into a larger area that functioned as his shop. In one of the corners sat a pile of iron. Tim never knew when he would need a certain piece of metal to fix something. Over the years, the pile had grown large.

Many years ago, Tim attempted to organize his metal pile. He had built a little framework with heavy pieces on the bottom and lighter, shorter pieces toward the top. Over the years the framework became buried underneath the iron. Now pieces were sticking out at every angle with steel laying on the ground in a sort of a semicircle against the wall.

Tim thought this was a good setup because you never know when you might need that special piece.

Leaving the shop area, Tim proceeded to survey the machine shed. The 50-by-100-foot storage area seemed huge when it was built. Back then, there was room for everything he had and he could even park several trucks or a semi inside if needed.

Those were the good old days. Now the machine shed was mostly full of odds and ends, and Tim meandered to the very back to survey his parked equipment.

There were two items that were hard to justify keeping. One was the rotary hoe he hadn’t used in decades, and the second was a cultivator. He should have sold them years ago when they had some value. Occasionally Tim would see a cultivator at a farm auction, but he hadn’t seen a rotary hoe for sale for as long as he could remember.

After looking over every inch of his machine shed, Tim decided that there were some things that could go. It was almost supper time, so all of this would wait till tomorrow. That night Tim informed his wife that he was going to do some purging in the machine shed and perhaps she might want to consider doing the same in the attic.

The next morning Tim rounded up a few of his older grandchildren who lived close by and were capable of driving a tractor or skid loader. It took most of two hours to move all the useful and used equipment out of his shed. His yard now looked like he was having a farm sale. He wondered what he should keep and what should be thrown away.

The previous winter, Tim had watched a show about minimalism and people throwing away things in their house. There were a bunch of rules that they applied depending on the type of item and its use. Clothes that had not been worn in two years were sent to Goodwill. Old furniture could also be donated.

If you didn’t use it and it didn’t have sentimental value, then out the door it went.

Tim was unsure what the rules were for cleaning out a machine shed, so he sort of made them up as he went. The rotary hoe and the cultivator were relatively easy decisions. A skid loader with forklift tines made short order of hauling them out. Behind them on the floor were several augers. There was a 20-foot one and a 40-foot one that had been split into two pieces to make storage easier. They had been hiding behind the cultivator for many years. The augers were still in good shape, but Tim had no livestock, so out the door they went.

The next few items were more difficult. He had a well-loved field cultivator that was still in good shape. After updating a few years ago, his new tillage equipment gave him a much better seed bed. There was also a 20-foot disc. These had been his main tillage tools for many years. They seemed too good to part with and he might have use for them in the future.

With an hour to go to lunch, Tim had the disk and the field cultivator pulled out but parked off to the side. He needed more time to consider what to do with them.

On the other side of the machine shed sat a 1982 blue Chevy pickup. It was parked in the corner because Tim always thought it would be a good restoration project. After looking it over, he was sad to see rust continuing to eat away on the sides and on the frame. All four tires were completely flat, so the boys hooked onto the rear with the skid loader and raised up the back end.

It took almost 20 minutes to carefully move the truck out the front door and into the yard. The front flat tires skidded and bumped as they moved it all along. As Tim looked for the appropriate place to park the truck, he walked around the opposite side and immediately thought something was wrong with how it looked. Upon closer inspection the frame of the truck was rusted so severely that picking it up had caused it to bend in the center. His truck was now in a sort of U shape and made the decision to scrap it much easier.

After lunch, Tim and his grandchildren kept moving and sorting things until the shed was completely empty.

The decision to keep, scrap or sell things had cleaned out much of the shed. There was now more room to park additional items if needed. Outside, there were two groups: one for the scrap iron dealer and one for the auctioneer. Tim was pleased with the progress.

Over the next few weeks, he attacked his shop with similar but less dramatic results. It was hard to part with any of his tools or supplies, but he organized them and made a few wooden shelves to help them stay that way. At the end of the month, he was still not a minimalist, but he had dispelled any potential rumors that he was a hoarder. Having a clean shed and shop did feel good.

Feeling confident in his efforts, Tim offered to help his wife organize their attic. They agreed to only work on it during the morning before the temperature got too hot. Together, they brought down boxes of their children’s old stuff to be sorted and claimed. They were happy to pass items on to the next generation now and not have them be a headache for someone to deal with in the future.

Bob Dunaway and Associates offer estate and retirement planning. Gary Johnson can be reached at 563-927-4554 or by emailing him at gary@vermazentax.com.

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