We got our first real rain this week. Not just a drizzle, but actual California winter rain that makes you remember we're technically supposed to have seasons here. The kind that turns dirt into mud and makes you realize your driveway drainage isn't as good as you thought.

I spent most of today in my garage. Not working on the Integra or the Element. Not turning wrenches. Not making content. Just... organizing. Throwing stuff out. Moving things around. Making space.

Something we don’t talk about when it comes to project cars, or just DIY car stuff in general is that sometimes the biggest barrier to progress isn't money or knowledge or even time. It's that you literally don't have room to work.

My Integra is parked outside right now. Has been for weeks. And every time it rains, I feel this low-level guilt about it. Like I'm failing at being a car person because my project car doesn't fit in my garage. Because the garage is full of... stuff. Sneakers I’ve collected. Tools I’ve collected for doing the work. Parts I bought for projects I haven't started (and some for cars I’ve never even owned). Cardboard boxes I've been meaning to break down for months. And of course, every box for every Apple product I have ever bought. The accumulated debris of intentions that haven't turned into action.

So today, with rain coming down and no chance of working on the car anyway, I did the least Instagram-worthy thing possible. I organized.

I threw out three garbage bags of actual garbage that I'd been holding onto for no reason. I consolidated parts bins. I moved tools that have been sitting in small tool bags for at least six months into my main tool box. I dug out a bunch of random things from boxes that should have been emptied and recycled years ago. (Anyone need an old Pioneer CD player remote control?)

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It took six hours. I have nothing to show for it on YouTube. No time-lapse of progress. No satisfying before-and-after. Just a garage that looks... slightly less chaotic than it did this morning.

And I kept thinking about how this is what winter builds actually look like.

We romanticize summer car work. For me it’s the garage door open, Giants baseball on the radio, iced coffee on the workbench, working on your car while the sun sets. That's the content. That's the vibe. That's what car culture looks like in my mind.

But winter? Winter builds happen in closed garages with space heaters running. In the dark after work. In the cold on Saturdays when you'd rather be doing anything else. Winter is when you do all the stuff that doesn't make good content. The organizing. The planning. The parts research. The unglamorous prep work that makes summer progress possible.

Winter is when you finally tackle that wiring diagram you've been avoiding. When you strip and clean parts because it's too cold to actually install them. When you spend three weekends just figuring out what you actually have versus what you need to order.

Winter builds are lonely. Nobody's posting "spent four hours organizing my socket set" on Instagram. Nobody's watching YouTube videos titled "I threw out old boxes and swept my garage." (Unless I’m wrong and you all want videos like that? LMK.)There are no cars and coffee events in the rain. No cruise nights to Sonic or In-N-Out. No reason to have your car looking good because nobody's going to see it anyway.

But winter is when the real progress happens. Not like the visible kind. The foundational kind.

I've been feeling guilty about not making more progress on the Integra. For myself and for those of you that are subscribed on YouTube. The project has been stalled for weeks. Every time I think about working on it, I look at my garage and feel overwhelmed by the logistics of just getting to the point where I can work on it. Where would I put it? Where would I put all the stuff that's currently where it would need to go? How do I make space for this?

And today, in the rain, I realized... making space IS progress. It doesn't feel like it. It's not exciting. But clearing room in your garage so you can actually work on your project car is just as necessary as ordering parts or watching install videos or doing any of the stuff that feels like "real" car work.

This is the part of car culture nobody talks about. The preparation that comes before the preparation. The work that enables the work. The unglamorous, unsexy, completely necessary task of literally making physical space for your project.

Because you can have all the knowledge in the world. You can have the perfect parts sitting in boxes. You can have the time and the motivation and the plan. But if you don't have room to actually do the work, none of that matters.

I think about this with YouTube a lot. I love watching the big automotive YouTube channels. The ones with lift-equipped shops and tool chests that cost more than my car. The builders who can say "today we're doing a full suspension swap" and then actually do it in one episode. Watching a build happen in real-time, edited down to 20 minutes of satisfying progress, is amazing. It's inspiring. We all love it.

But it's not reality. At least not for most of us.

It's not how most car enthusiasts actually live. We're not working in climate-controlled shops with every tool we need within arm's reach. We're in single-car garages (or double if we’re lucky!) packed with lawn equipment and holiday decorations. We're sharing space with our partner's stuff. We're moving things every single time we want to work on anything because there's no dedicated workspace.

Most of us are living paycheck to paycheck. Parts get ordered when we can afford them, not when the project needs them. A "one episode" suspension install on YouTube is a three-month project in real life because you're waiting on payday to order the next piece. Or waiting for weather. Or waiting to make space.

One thing all those channels don't show... even the big builders with the nice shops had to start somewhere. They had to organize. They had to make space. They had to do the unsexy work. The difference is they don't film it anymore. They've graduated past the "figure out where to put stuff" phase. Their content is aspirational because they've already solved the problems most of us are still dealing with.

But that gap between YouTube builds and real-life builds creates this weird shame. You watch someone replace an entire drivetrain in a weekend and then look at your own project that's been sitting for months and think "what's wrong with me?" You see these perfect shops and coordinated tool walls and then look at your chaotic garage and feel like you're not a real enthusiast.

The algorithm rewards the finished product. The satisfying transformation. The "watch this rough car become beautiful." What it doesn't reward is the reality of how most builds actually happen. In pieces. Slowly. With long gaps between sessions. With setbacks and space issues and having to move everything just to access your workbench.

That's not inspiring content. That's just... life. But it's the life most of us are actually living with our projects.

People watch build videos and see the time-lapse of a car going from rough to clean. They see the satisfying progression from broken to fixed. What they don't see is the three weekends before filming started where the builder organized their garage. Where they made space. Where they did all the boring prep work that makes the exciting work possible.

And they definitely don't see the reality of working paycheck to paycheck. Of having to choose between fixing your project car and fixing your daily driver. Of ordering parts one at a time instead of all at once. Of taking twice as long because you're working around a budget that doesn't care about your momentum.

The algorithm doesn't reward "I spent today making my garage functional." There are no views in "I threw out stuff I don't need." Nobody subscribes for "watch me reorganize my tools for six hours." And nobody's making videos titled "I can't work on my car this month because I had to fix my toilet." Yes, I had to do that this morning as well.

But that's where progress actually starts (on the toilet? 😂). In the unsexy work. In the space-making. In the winter garage nobody sees. In the reality of building something when you don't have unlimited funds or unlimited space or unlimited time.

There's something about winter that forces this confrontation. In summer, you can work around the chaos. You can pull the car into the driveway, work on it in the sun, avoid dealing with the disaster inside your garage. But when it rains? When it's cold? When it gets dark at 5pm? You have to go inside. You have to face the mess. You have to either make space or accept that you're not going to make progress.

And maybe that's the gift of winter for car people. It forces you to do the foundation work. It makes you slow down and get organized. It takes away the option of working around the problem and makes you deal with it.

I'm not going to lie and say I enjoyed today. I didn't. Organizing is tedious. Throwing stuff out is painful when you've convinced yourself you might need it someday. Confronting how disorganized you've let things get is uncomfortable. I did my best.

But my garage has space now. Not a lot. But just barely enough that I can actually move the Integra inside when the rain stops. Enough that I can work on it without having to move seventeen things just to get to the part I need. Enough that progress is actually possible.

That's what winter builds are. Making the possible possible. Creating the conditions for progress. Doing the work that doesn't look like work but absolutely is.

So if you're sitting in your garage right now, in the cold, in the rain, organizing instead of wrenching... you're not wasting time. You're not procrastinating. You're not failing at being a car person.

You're building. Just not the part anyone sees.

Winter builds happen in garages nobody sees. And that's exactly where they need to happen.

If you know someone sitting in their garage right now feeling guilty about not making progress, send them this. We're all making space for something.

-Nick

P.S. - If your project is also parked outside right now because your garage is too full of stuff, you're not alone. If you spent this weekend organizing instead of wrenching, that counts as progress. If you're feeling guilty about not making visible progress on your build... maybe making space is the progress you actually need to make right now. And if you're comparing your single-car garage reality to YouTube shop dreams, remember... they had to start somewhere too. Progress is perfection, even when it's just making room to work.