clean up the basement

The past few days I’ve made some nice headway here. I’m taking things one section at a time, first focusing on the front area. I’m consolidating, organizing, and pitching (though, admittedly, I’ve always had trouble pitching enough).

Oh, and I should mention that the vinyl unit mentioned in my previous entry has been built (it’s great). Unfortunately, I’ve got two metal shelving units still unbuilt.

I’ve decided to take the approach of cleaning the basement like we’re moving. Why? Because by the time I finally finish, we’ll probably be ready to move again. :)

Real Simple has some good ideas on organizing your basement.

I’m going to pick up some metal racks this evening and start getting the basement in shape. I’m also going to vertical storage for my LPs (which are in the basement), which should help.

(excerpted from my blog)

I came across one large box, the box for my 17” CRT monitor (yes, Paul, yours), and was a bit surprised when I looked inside and saw nothing but packing peanuts. We’ve saved a bit of packing material since I send things out with some frequency since I prefer to reuse rather than purchase new stuff, but I had forgotten all about this gigantic box. Since we had plenty of other packing material and this was just taking up space, I decided to pitch it. Rather than fill a landfill with the un-eco-friendly peanuts, I decided to see if someone else could make use of them.

Sure enough, this morning someone nearby picked up the box after seeing the note I sent out to the local Freecycle list. I can now rest easy that should I find anything else that I’m tossing from the basement, I can Freecycle it and somebody will want it.

As a side note, did you know that a lot of people sell packing peanuts on ebay? Really, they do.

I cleared out a lot of empty boxes (as well as a large stack of phone books in the garage that had been sitting there waiting to be taken to the recycling plant for a long time) a couple weeks back, which helped make a dent. But clearing out my grandmother’s house is resulting in more stuff to be put in the basement, so the need to get better organized is going to increase even more in the coming month.

I hope to make some noticable headway in the next few weeks.

I started clearing out the area by the foot of the stairs last week and made some decent progress. Unfortunately, a few days later, a few more boxes went downstairs (from my father-in-law’s house… he’s moving and we “inherited” some of his stuff). But, I felt like I made some decent progress and hope to keep it going in coming months.

One thing I found helps: ripping my old vinyl to CD in my basement studio while I’m cleaning.

So we’ve got this great big basement and it’s just being used to hold… stuff. It’s partially storage (which is fine), partially stuff from my parents’ basement that was mine (which I need to go through and organize), and partially empty boxes (about half of which I’ve broken down).

But it’s all taking up so much space. I’d love to be able to actually finish off part of our basement, but since it’s the basement and not a section of the house I see every day, it’s easy to put off.

Ideally I’d like to get a few things out of our basement:

• Long-term storage – after all, that’s what a basement is for… I have no problem having things boxed up, as long as they’re organized
• Short-term storage – meaning stuff that we need access to somewhat frequently (at least once a year, like Christmas stuff). I’ve set up a bunch of shelves along the front wall for this.
• Entertaining – probably as a “game room” type of area.
• Dark room – I’d like Huyen to have her own darkroom.

My studio’s already in place, so that’s good, but there’s so much that needs to be done down there. I’d be more than happy to just get it all in decent shape and organized, even if we never get around to finishing it or building a dark room.

One possibility: get some of the stuff (like clothes) stored in the attic. The problem: the only access to the attic is a small area in the ceiling of our master bedroom’s closet. It ain’t easy to get up there. A proper entry way to the attic in the upstairs hallway (with a ladder and all) would be awesome.