Cleaning Out the Crap

Our basement has been the bane of our existences ever since my parents moved out of their house here in STL and I had to get my 25 years of crap out of their house and into ours. We really don't have much storage in our little split level so finding places for everything was a bear. So, needless to say, we shoved everything in our newly finished basement with hopes of one day sorting through everything and finding all my little trinkets a home.

We finally made time to get started on this HUGE task. When I say we packed the basement... I mean we PACKED the basement.

Our first task was to go through everything and throw out anything that I don't need, want, or have no use for. Trust me, this is going against every part of my being seeing as I'm an artist and can use everything for something. Plus I we want to homeschool so I can, again, use anything for something. So Luke stayed strong and if I had a smidgen of hesitance in my answer, he tossed it. Don't worry, we didn't just check everything, we sorted trash from Goodwill so at least some of my years and years of collecting crap will go to some good use.

After 2 1/2 hours of work, we got a bunch out of the way. The picture below is where the basement is at right now. It almost looks worse, but trust me... it's sooooooo much better. Our next task is to go through all the "keep" stuff and sort it out into air-tight containers for storage. We will continue to throw things away, but the goal is to get the basement spic and span so we can actually have an extra room in the house to use... seeing as that's why we had it finished in the first place. I hate cleaning, but it feels good after its done.