Banishing the Basement Blues

For the past year and a half, going into my basement has depressed me. I dream of a day that I can relax down there, and I hope that it is coming soon. Progress has been made! Things are starting to look better in the basement. It is by no means finished, but I can now spend time down there without feeling the urge to rip out my hair. I may no longer be eligible for the show “Hoarders.” This is a good start.

Why had we let the basement get so bad? Well, it is a long story, and I already wrote about it on this blog. You can find the tale and a lot more pictures here. In this post, I am going to describe my strategy and post some before and after pictures. I was going to label them “Before” and “After” but then I realized that it should be obvious!

I had been hoping to have the basement organized before school started last year. When that did not happen, tears started to flow. Having things so unorganized caused me great anxiety, and I did not want to have to deal with that stress while working. Douglas promised me that he would take on the full responsibility of cleaning up the basement.

He has done some work on it. There have been times when it was looking slightly better for a period of time, but then he would stop focusing on it and it would regress. It was hard, because so many things did not have a place, and we were throwing them where ever rather than putting them away.

Finally, last week I was through waiting for Douglas to fix the problem. He was in the office for the day, and I was home with some time for the first time in a while.  I went all out, but with a plan.

It is important to have a strategy when organizing a space. We have a good amount of storage in the basement, and my first step was to designate a purpose for each piece of shelving and cabinet. For example, this cabinet now holds our excess kitchen and barware. If something does not fit in that category, then it should not be in that space.

While I was sorting through all of the objects in the room, I had two boxes. One was a box for all of the things that we want to get rid of. At the end of the day, I closed that box up with tape. If we find space to store it, we will sell these items in a yard sale next summer. If we find that it is in the way, I will take it to a second-hand shop. Most importantly, our space will not be cluttered by these things ever again.

The other box was for small items that we need or want to keep, but that do not have a place yet. As I work my way around the basement, I will have to find homes for these things. If I cannot find a place for them, they will have to go. In the meantime, they are in a box and out of our way.

It is amazing to me, how many things we own and rarely use. We need to be more ruthless about culling our possessions and not bringing things into our house that we really do not need.

For now, I am thrilled with how this section of the basement looks. There is still a great deal that needs to be done, but at least I can spend time here without having a panic attack. I think that this has also motivated Douglas to finish the job as well. He had been feeling overwhelmed with the amount of work there was and is also feeling better now that this area is organized. Yay!

Happy Homemaking!