WARNING: NO PICTURES OF PRETTY INTERIORS IN THIS POST! But if you like a good decluttering before-and-after then stay with me.
I wouldn’t say my weekend was fun, but it was productive. Cleaning out our unfinished basement was on 2010’s fall to-do list, and somehow we skipped right over it. Life will do that to your to-do lists, you know. Anyhow, after I made the decision to really focus on reducing {stuff, stress, debt, etc.} this year, Handy Hubby and I scheduled for a babysitter to be at our house this past Saturday for 6 hours during the day. We knew if we were gonna make any kind of dent in the basement clutter, our boys would have to be preoccupied. I’ve tried ‘organizing’ with our kids before. It doesn’t work…at least for major organization sessions. As soon as I have piles separated, *someone* starts pulling stuff out and I’m back at square one in 5 minutes. Ahh! So, yeah, we paid somebody to come play with the boys while we did a number on the hot mess in our basement. Oddly enough, our babysitter’s mom just so happened to have a 15′ truck for the weekend that she kindly offered up to us for hauling junk away. Score! {Thanks Lydia and Sarah!}
Good thing…we had a lot of crap in the basement. When we moved in 3 years ago, anything that we didn’t know where to put got thrown in the basement and was never seen again. We also added to the chaos by dragging unwanted furniture, toys, electronics, etc. down there over time. It all added up to one giant disorderly place. And while we didn’t see the mess on a daily basis, I knew it was there…hidden by our tidy main floor. I felt like it was a dirty secret I was keeping. Here I was decorating simply and telling you all how to disguise toy storage in your living spaces…all the while I had a dumpsterful of crap sitting in my basement. Something had to be done.
In proper Mission Organization fashion, we hung signs around the basement categorizing each pile.
Handy Hubby and I spent 6 hours sorting through every last tote, bag and box, only coming up once for a quick lunch. We kept a notepad in the ‘donate’ zone to write down each item we put in that pile…for tax deduction purposes.
We ended up with 4 pages of ‘donate’ stuff. That was Saturday. On Sunday, we loaded up our donation pile into the ‘big twuck’ {as Everett called it}. Seriously, it took a BUH-zillion trips up and down those basement stairs. It was 25° outside, but I was sweating with no coat. Good workout. We didn’t have a babysitter for this part of the binge. Everett was desperately trying to prove his big boy status by ‘helping.’ I had to keep opening bags and giving him something small to carry out to the ‘big twuck.’ His favorite part was walking up and down the loading ramp of the truck. Here’s the ‘big twuck’ in all its glory right before we hauled it off to Goodwill.
This was the view from our front door this morning…
…notice the mongo trash pile on the curb. We handed down the plastic storage bins to Handy Hubby’s folks who may be moving soon and just so happened to be in town for the day. But enough talk. Let’s walk the walk. Check out these before-and-afters of the once furniture dungeon…
The items {doors, mirrors, old island countertop} propped up against the studs in the after shot are waiting to be hauled off to our local Habitat for Humanity ReStore. Sadly, they aren’t open on Sundays. The black chairs in the bottom right hand corner of the after shot were waiting for our brother-in-law to come pick them up. They’re gone now!
Before, the ping pong table wasn’t getting any playtime. It was acting like more of a workbench. Now, you could probably fit 5 ping pong tables down there.
Who knew changing the furnace air filter could be so easy without all that crap in the way?
The majority of the stuff we kept ended up in this bump-out under the sunroom. In a few months, I plan on going through this keep pile and whittling it down even further.
That’s the view looking back toward the front of the basement where you come down the steps. Nice. All-in-all the basement binge went off without a hitch. Things did get a little hairy when this guy made an appearance.
That picture doesn’t do him justice. He was easily the size of a ping pong ball. Maybe he thought he was one since he was hiding out under the ping pong table. I saved Handy Hubby from him. He’s not fond of spiders. All the dust from the basement and salt from the walk {we didn’t want to slip on the ice!} got tracked onto the floors. I spent the better part of the afternoon scrubbing them clean.
It feels so good to have a clutter-free basement. I’m glad we finally wrestled it into submission, but I’m also looking forward to doing something fun next weekend.
images: all Dana Miller for House*Tweaking
DIY, organization