Unexpected benefits
The last time I moved, I found some moving boxes that hadn’t been unpacked…since the previous time I moved! This is obviously one of the most pointless things ever. If the contents were so unimportant that you haven’t used them in years and honestly forgot about them, chances are they belong in the trash or the 2nd hand market. However, sometimes there can be exceptions.
When moving into a new home, I consider it very important to enable the function of each room. That means that the room can be unorganized, chaotic and not rather nice to be in – but you can at least use it for something. My wife has another set of priorities. She prefers to have a “garbage room” (my own definition) where she just puts all the unhandled moving boxes, and stuff yet to be organized. She does this to focus on the remaining rooms and not just make them usable, but also nice.
It was a big day for me when we finally got rid of our so-called garbage room and converted it into a proper bedroom with a little desk. Now, it had a proper useable function. One by one, our rooms and spaces in our home was reclaimed. However, the garage has been the black sheep in this bunch. The garage is the easiest space to convert into a garbage room, or storage room or whatever you call it. And in this very garage, I have had several of those stupid unpacked moving boxes among other stuff. To use the garage for its intended purpose – to store a car or two – has been completely out of the question. At least until two weeks ago when the W124 arrived. Until now, we have always kept both our cars in the carport. But I knew I had to get the W124 inside ASAP to protect it from further rust. Hell has a special place for people who treat a barn find/future classic badly.
This illustrates how a chain of events can be started. Reclaiming the garage suddenly became very important. And I acted accordingly, by promptly driving to the local hardware store and bought a bunch of garage storage shelves and built a new front wall in full height, even a little L-shape to let the shelves continue a bit on one side wall. Now, I could finally organize my stuff. Before, we had three shelves on consoles on half the front wall in half the height. This was an unrealized storage potential of epic proportions. And today, I have my car on one side and a ton of free space on the other side for lawnmover, bikes etc. It feels so great to finally reclaim the final function of the final space of our home.
My most important lesson here is that if I hadn’t brought the W124 back home, the probability that I would have a functional garage today is near zero. I needed an extra (backup) car and ended up with a veteran Benz and an organized garage. I was not counting on this summer. It is funny how fast things can change when a new attractive idea grabs your attention. Now, I blame myself for not realizing sooner that a veteran car as a backup car is perhaps the best thing since sliced bread. At least for us. Not just economically, but because it is so nice to drive it. One thing I need to do for sure is to document the costs associated with this W124 over the coming years and compare it to a modern car. It will be extremely interesting.
We’ll probably replace our oil burner and get an EV in 2025 as a main car and keep the W124 as a backup car until hell freezes over. Oh, how I love trying new stuff. The ripples on the water bring new ideas with them in all directions.