“Everybody’s got a little place for their stuff. This is my stuff, that’s your stuff, that’ll be his stuff over there. That’s all you need in life, a little place for your stuff. That’s all your house is: a place to keep your stuff. If you didn’t have so much stuff, you wouldn’t need a house. You could just walk around all the time. A house is just a pile of stuff with a cover on it…and when you leave your house, you gotta lock it up. Wouldn’t want somebody to come by and take some of your stuff. They always take the good stuff. They never bother with that crap you’re saving. All they want is the shiny stuff. That’s what your house is, a place to keep your stuff while you go out and get…more stuff!”

-George Carlin

I love this routine. (I recommend you watch the whole thing because it is truly a great piece of stand-up comedy.) I’ve been thinking a lot about “stuff” lately because, as you know, we’ve been acquiring quite a bit of it over the last few weeks. I know a lot of families live in a very small place, and while our little condo definitely does not fall into the “large” category, I consider us to be very fortunate that our daughter is able to have her own bedroom, her own bathroom, and a “place for her stuff.” The problem is, we are running out of places for our stuff.

More from George Carlin:

“Sometimes you gotta move, gotta get a bigger house. Why? No room for your stuff anymore. Did you ever notice when you go to somebody else’s house, you never quite feel a hundred percent at home? You know why? No room for your stuff. Somebody else’s stuff is all over the…place!”

I posted a status on Facebook the other day that said “It looks like somebody named Graco moved into my house, labeled all of his boxes and left them in my garage.” It’s true. We have boxes all over the place containing lots of things the baby will need during all her various stages of growth for the next 6-12 months or so. Also, while she hasn’t even arrived yet, she has already completely taken over our former office, which was also the place where we put everything we didn’t know what to do with. (Though the nursery is really looking great thanks to my talented wife. I’m sure she’ll share it here soon.)

I knew we’d get to this point and for the most part I’ve felt prepared to handle all the new stuff that we’d be accumulating. I pride myself in taking after my Grandpa Bobby who could incredibly maneuver things around so that he was able to fit entire piles of seemingly endless items into very small spaces. I guess he had to…he had so much stuff! But even with my grandpa’s genetics and the fact that we’ve been purging stuff for months, I finally looked around last week and came to the conclusion that we just didn’t have the room we needed. Our garage had gotten to the point where it was housing almost all of the overflow, but the stuff we need regular access to was being blocked by boxes or furniture, and it’s like one giant fire hazard in there. So, as all dads need to be able to do, I came up with a solution and moved it into action quickly: overhead storage.

I know it’s not exactly rocket science I came up with there, but solutions don’t need to be original if they are good. And this one is. I now have almost 2,500 cubic feet of storage available above my head in our garage. I literally cannot wait to put all our never-accessed bins of stuff from college, high school, and past relationships up there and start using the garage more efficiently.

My grandpa would be proud.