Finding a tool for every task

The Boston Globe

Beverly Beckham

It is a perfect autumn day, late afternoon, and I am in the garage, cleaning. Although maybe "piling" is a better word for what I am doing. Rearranging. Moving things. It's a two-car garage, which means that in theory it can hold two cars.

In fact, it never has. Clearing a path through the garage to the back door is my only goal.

A kitchen table lives in my garage, along with an old trash masher, a working refrigerator, and a brand new - don't ask - modular shower, not hooked up, of course, just sitting there, a constant reminder of a remodeling mistake. Plus there's the usual garage stuff - old bikes, flat tires, broken rakes, rusty tools, fertilizer, potting soil, bird food, baby carriages, a lawn mower, a wheelbarrow, a snow blower, golf clubs, a spreader that doesn't work, cans that need recycling, defogger, Raid, jumper cables, sand.

My friend Ann, who lives in Plainville, has a garage that is so clean you think, "Should I take off my shoes?" before you step into it. It is cleaner and neater than most kitchens. She vacuums it, has a place for everything, and puts everything in its place.I think of her garage as I drag everything I can out of mine.

This is the conversation I have with my husband when I am ready to sweep. I call him at work and ask, "You bought me a new broom, right?"

"Right," he answers, in the middle of something, but patient. My husband is a very patient man.

"You bought me a new broom because the old one was missing, right?"

"Right," he says again.

“So do you have it? Did you take it?" Asking my husband if he took my broom - a deluxe thing with big, stiff bristles - is like asking him if he's wearing my high-heeled shoes. There's not a chance, but I ask anyway because this is the third missing broom since May. And I'm hoping that maybe, just maybe, he borrowed it to use as a prop in some office Halloween decoration.

But, no, he doesn't have it, he tells me.

So I state the obvious. "Someone is stealing my brooms."

My patient husband sighs. "Someone is breaking into the garage to steal brooms, is that what you think?" he asks calmly.

"That's exactly what I think," I fume.

"Someone is breaking into the garage to steal brooms but not golf clubs?"

I see where he's going. "He's an industrious thief," I argue.

"What do you need the broom for?" he asks, redirecting the conversation.

"I need it to sweep the garage." And this is what he says then, cross my heart, without pause, without preamble: "No, you don't. That's the wrong broom. That's a broom for rough surfaces. You need to use a soft-bristled broom for the garage. A soft-bristled broom doesn't raise as much dust."

This from a man whose sole acquaintance with brooms is transporting them from the hardware store to home.

He also tells me that he bought two brooms when he was last at the hardware store, the missing one and the just discussed soft-bristled one, which, he says, is hanging up in the garage, still in its wrapper.

I find it, unwrap it, twist the long pole into the broom part, and then I sweep. And what do you know? My husband is right. I don't get dust in my nose or in my hair or all over my clothes. The dust stays close to the ground.

And I think that maybe you don't need to actually come in contact with brooms to know how they work. The same is true with designer fashions. Manolo Blahnik. Jimmy Choo. I don't own designer shoes, but I'd know how to walk in them.

The soft-bristled broom works well. At the end of the day the garage looks not like my friend Ann's, but better than it did. There's still no room for a car inside, never mind two, but for the moment, anyway, there's a well-swept path around the modular shower, past the lawnmower, behind the baby carriages, in front of the wheelbarrow, under the hanging rakes, over the toolbox, clear to the back door.

There is also a renewed appreciation for my husband, who is always bringing home tools that will make my life easier: a pitchfork for mulching ( I was using a shovel); a steel spring-back leaf rake for fall cleaning (I was using bamboo); a fixed-head, half-moon edger ( I was using a rolling model); and, of course, his most recent find, my new soft-bristled, perfect-for-my-garage push broom.