Organizing the Basement Workshop

This post was planned for Wednesday, but on Tuesday afternoon our power went out for about five hours, which prevented me from writing it. Instead Douglas and I played Boogle by headlamp. As that is my favorite game in the world and I rarely have the chance to play it, I cannot say that I minded the change in schedule.

Back in January of 2013 I shared My Big Dirty Secret. It was a painful thing to admit that our basement was worthy of starring in an episode of Hoarders. It had been a year since Douglas had moved in, and we still had not managed to cull our belongings down to an acceptable amount let alone organize them or find homes for them.

The first step was to hold a yard sale in June of 2013. It helped to remove large quantities of “treasures” from our basement. In August of that year I was able to fully clean and organize the living area and the storage areas of the basement. I also took some measures to make the basement feel more livable, and Douglas made a cover to hide the sewage pipes. Although we made a great deal of progress, it still frustrated me that there was still so much to do.

In January of 2014 I made it one of my New Year’s Resolutions to finish cleaning and organizing the basement.  In my December Update I had to admit that I had not finished. I made some progress down there in early May, and nothing was done in June. I worked down there a lot in July and August and posted an update here. Then, we had a yard sale on the weekend of the 23-24. In November, we did work on a project in the basement, but I don’t know if it counts as cleaning or organizing. First, I wrapped the pole in twine and then Douglas built a perch for Crème. The only thing that we did in the basement in December was to decorate it. I wrote that I considered the basement 90% finished, but I think that I was being overly generous with that assessment.

Last Friday, Douglas and I were both trying to work on our own individual projects. I was looking for something in the basement workshop and was becoming increasingly frustrated that I could not move in there let alone find a tool. There may have been screaming, crying and accusations thrown at my dearest loved one. OK, I have to admit that I did not behave well. Rooms that look like this bring out the worst in me.

I decided that I could no longer wait for Douglas to clean and organize this area, something that he had been promising to do since he came to live here in 2012. The man has many good qualities, but organization is not one of them. He needed my help, and I put everything aside to start the project immediately. By the end of the night, there had been significant progress.

On Saturday, Douglas decided that he should finish what I had started since it was raining too much to work on his other project. I think that his real motivation was fear that I might get rid of something precious to him in a fit of purging. Whatever his motivation, I was glad for his help. After many hours and a couple of squabbles later we had accomplished great things. The basement workshop was actually usable!

I still have to find homes for some objects that we are letting go, and we are planning to better organize the inside of some drawers.

However, I am thrilled to have this area functioning well for both of us. Now if we can both just promise to put things back where they belong. Why is that so darn difficult???!!!

Happy Homemaking!