The Great Basement Cleanout - 1

We spent a few hours each of the last few weekends down in our basement, otherwise known as the great black hole of junk that exists beneath our feet. After the 3 hours of breathing in dust and spiderwebs, I've come to the appalling realization that: I've married a HOARDER. Okay, this is no shocking revelation. I knew this from the beginning. Once, when he was living in his lovely old bachelor pad, I made him clean out his bathroom drawers and found 26 old toothbrushes crammed in them. His reasoning behind keeping 5 years worth of old toothbrushes - they're apparently very handy in cleaning car parts. Okay, one or two maybe, but 26?


So when we took on the task of cleaning out the basement, I knew it'd be no easy feat. We each inherited boxes from our parents when we bought our house that they'd been storing in their basements and were happy to finally pawn off on us. Tim had many, many more than me. Old art projects, photos, diaries, high school yearbooks, and college textbooks made their journey from their dusty basements into ours where they've sat for the last few years. But I've really wanted to get the basement organized and cleaned up before Baby #2 arrives, so down to the basement we go.

We had a huge laugh at my very dramatic junior high diaries. Oh the angst of a 13 year old girl! But I think Tim stopped laughing when I pointed out that he'll be experiencing it first hand in this house in 13 short years and a look of panic crossed his face.

Ideally, I am envisioning some sort of playroom down there to have another area for the kiddos to play. Toys are starting to creep into every inch of this house and we need another area to put them. A new baby means adding a swing, a bouncer seat, and playmat back to our family room. The same room that's already filled with a million other toys. So we hope to organize things better and set up some play area. I just hope we can get all the stuff sorted and organized down there so we can set it up in the next few months. Our basement isn't finished right now, unfortunately, but I think we could still make do with it if we got some carpeting and did some decorating to try to make it more homey. We'll have to see what we can manage to do in the next 3 months.