clean my basement

what an incredible amount of work for not much return.

i had so many people asking me “did your kids actaully play with this stuff? omg, you actually have all the parts to this?” one woman commented that she was amazed that i had taken all the old plastic valves out of the sippy cups. “usually people leave them in and they’re all moldy” eeewwwwww!

i’ve got to say that i’ve never been to a garage sale, so i have no idea what condition things are in. it just seemed to make sense that, oh i don’t know, gross stuff wouldn’t sell.

a few things didn’t sell – some will go to social services for kids that come into care, and some will go to my son’s daycare center. the rest i’ll take to the rescue mission.

i have to say, my favorite sale was the tricycle that i sold for $3 to a kid who looked like his mom had just bought him a new car. he was so excited and happy about it. damn, i’d have just given it to him to see that. it’s good to see perfectly good useful stuff back in the hands of kids who will use them.

also, it was really good for my kids to have the experience of letting go of some of their things. i’ll take the money that we earned and let them have some of it (since it was mostly their baby stuff, to be fair) and use the rest for fixing up a play are in the basement. my daughter was upset that she had to get rid of her roller skates - they weren’t even close to fitting her - until i mentioned that she could use some of the money to buy new ones, if that’s what she really wanted. now she’s looking at these heelies, which are sneakers with wheels in them. we’re gonna wait until after the ballet recital for those, i think. no point dancing with a broken arm, if you don’t have to…

sheesh, by the time i get this basement thing done, they are going to be ready to move out of the house.

i’m going to have a yard sale to get rid of the stuff that places don’t want to take as donations (mostly baby and toddler toys—things my kids have outgrown) i figure i’ll use whatever moeny i earn from the sale towards getting some of that soft spongy floor tile for a play area for the kids.

i’ms tarting to get visions of what a cleaned up, useful basement area could look like, instead of the giant piles of boxes of god only knows what in them.

and i have an idea of building a pantry under the stairs, since i don’t have one in the kitchen (damn “open floor plan” house) right now stuff is on shelves in the basement, but an actual pantry….hmmmm…:)

last fall i donated a giant bag of fabric and craft supplies to my son’s preschool. now, the bulletin boards outside each of the classrooms are covered in fabric—i see projects hung on the walls comprised of bits of old halloween costumes, curtains i’ve made, ribbon i used for various things, all over the place.

it feels really good to see it all being used so well, not taking up space in my house or going unused and wasted.

i kept an inventory of all the gazillion articles of clothing i donated last year. now i’m doing my taxes using turbotax, which comes with a program called its deductible which helps you assign values to the items that you donate. wow, the value of it all is way more than i expected! so now i’m feeling like i’m going to get audited because who keeps 6 years worth of kids clothes in their basement?

that the small wing of the basement that i cleaned last fall for my glass area (which is shared with the laundry, my off season clothing storage, the furnace and the hot water heater) has remained clean. and i’ve been using it for glass. and laundry. go me!

it seems like they are all over the house, and lo and behold, there are quite literally boxes more in my basement. and books and old papers and boxes of photos like you wouldn’t believe. i don’t even know where some of this stuff came from.

and yes, the aforementioned toys, which i still need to get rid of or donate. and a large carpet remnant underneath it all, which i’m going to ditch, beacuse i think it’s harboring mildew, even though the basement is really dry as far as basements go.

so, i’ve started hauling up boxes into the family room and sit next to a huge garbage bag and have been going through them. i still have a lot of work to do, but i’ve tackled about half the magazines (most are getting ditched, some are getting clipped and articles put into folders, but most are garbage. i figure most of this “really important information” i can probably find online.

i have a few boxes from my mothers attic from when she was getting ready to move that i’ve started going through. i found some of my jewelry from when i was a kid. nice things that i gave to my daughter. a handful of breyer horses that went to my daughter and my son. enought books to justify putting built in bookshelves into the living room and using it as the library it really functions as. (i really want to do that!)

i also found an envelope of letters from friends of mine from when i was in high school. some of the nicest stuff. i read a note from a friend of mine, a guy, and it was clearly asking me out. totally missed that at the time. lots of sweet little notes from rafe—a nice reminder that at least at one time, i wasn’t a total waste of space.

so the idea here is to clean out all this crap, get rid of the extraneous crap, hide the stuff i should get rid of but can’t, pull up the carpet and make a playroom for the kids where they won’t get glitter glue all over the carpet in the dining room- that-currently-functions-as-a-playroom.

it would be so nice to have a real dining room. without toys. with a table and chairs and a hutch to match the large curio that is in there now. and no plastic shelving. right now, the room decor is waterford crystal and fisher price. i’d like to have a real adult style dining room before i turn 40. slowly but surely i’m getting there.

okay, so they were smallish boxes (diaper boxes from wholesale clubs) but they represeneted 6 years worth of stuff that was totally useable, but not to me or my kids. on the way there i was listening to the sunday morning acoustic show on our local rock station. they were playing a song, by mary chapin carpenter, i think, about a favorite old shirt, and how it represented her life history. it was all very poignant, so i had to turn off the radio and quickly get over to the donation center to give away the clothes without thinking of how cute my kids were in some of them and what nice times we had in them. (‘keep thinking…they’re just clothes, they’re just clothes) so i gave them up, hoping that someone else will get to have nice memories of their own kids with them, too.

it cleared out a bunch of room—and the corner for the workbench for my glass area is finally empty! (erm…again, but this time the stuff that was there is gone!)

also went through some of my old craft supplies. for someone who isn’t very crafty, i sure had a lot of stuff. i threw out a bunch of fabric scraps that were no good, folded up the decent stuff, separated out the ribbons and notions, and took the good scraps and put it all in a huge bag to donate to my son’s school.

next? the old toys…

a ha! i finally found some decent places to donate my stuff, rather than the default ‘take it to the rescue mission’ where most of my clothes have gone.

i found a bunch of places who will take some of the baby stuff that i don’t need anymore. places who will give it to parents in need. the idea of standing in my driveway haggling over a $2.00 toy just doesn’t motivate me to want to have a tag sale. i envision myself saying ‘fine, you don’t want it? i’d rather give it to someone who really needs it.’ so why go through the machinations of a tag sale—just give it away. i figure i’d make, what, a couple hundred bucks max? i could fritter that away over nothing…i feel better about donating it all.

also had a heated word or two with rafe about some of his stuff that was down there, and got him to get rid of some of it. very cathartic. so to speak.

still lots more to go, but it feels good to see it happening.

i want to put a little glass studio in my basement, so i have a little incentive. i’ve gone through most of my old clothes and trashed and donated what i could. i need to get the kitchen pantry stuff in order, since i don’t have a pantry in my kitchen, and figure out what to do with all the holiday decoration rubbermaid containers that are stacked around. where the hell did i get all this stuff?????