At 7:12 on a warm Saturday morning, a ceramic lamp slid off a pile of broken plaster and shattered across the driveway. The sound snapped through the quiet street in Pasadena. A sparrow lifted from the telephone wire. Behind the open garage, Elena Ruiz stood with a broom in one hand and a question on her mind: how could one house contain so much stuff?
For twenty-three years, the garage had collected the ordinary evidence of a busy family life: a cracked bookcase, a worn-out recliner, boxes of children’s school projects, and scraps from a kitchen renovation that had ended months earlier. Now Elena’s daughter was moving back into the house, and the room needed to become useful again. The family had one weekend to clear it.
