Our Basement!

Having left it to the last minute (practically), I started cleaning the basement today! Yuck. What a mess. It was quite impossible to even walk down there before I started clearing a path this afternoon. Here's what we're up against ...
It's just a very small room, so you wouldn't think you could get that much old junk packed into it ... but we managed to do just that! In the last few years, I made it a deliberate habit to just avoid the place altogether ... bad idea. The dust! The cobwebs! Layers of paper, video games, computer programs, college research, books, and everyone's discarded stuff just landed down in our little tiny basement room; and like I said, since the maid (me) was in denial about it, it looked pretty pathetic and hopeless down there.
Last spring, when I was contemplating my retirement, I envisioned "tackling" this little room and turning it into a playroom; but everytime I went down there, I decided there were much more interesting and necessary projects to concern myself with around here! PLUS, I am claustrophobic and seriously, can barely breathe when I enter such a chaotic small space.

But Christmas is less than three weeks away, and I really want to have another room for people to "escape" to just in case the rest of the house becomes too boring. Sometimes it just helps to have a change of scenery -- at least that's how it works when you are entertaining multiple small children. So I took a deep breath, and plunged in! After four pretty intense hours of work, we can actually walk through the room now. The desk has been completely emptied of all of its litter and ages-old high school homework (it's been 4-5 years since we had anyone in high school around here), old floppy disks, CD's, etc. I think we are going to disassemble the desk and trash it.
The closet underneath the stairway (you know, the one that when you would open the door stuff would fall out) has been completely emptied of it's unbelievably worthless contents and I can actually WALK inside of it. There is quite a bit of storage space in there now! And look! I found a few treasures hidden way, way under the stairs ...

I found our old set of wooden blocks that the boys and I used to play with by the hour, as well as all of the pieces to our marble run. I'm going to clean them all up so that we can play with them some more. Originally, I was hoping that by Christmas I would have the room cleaned, painted and pictures up and it would look real nice. I have downsized that goal to completing the cleaning, sorting, and/or trashing of all items down there; shampooing the carpet, getting some better lighting, bringing my new IKEA road rug and all of the matchbox and hotwheel cars down there, and cleaning and organizing the toy shelves. I am going to accomplish that much by the time all of you arrive for Christmas! The rest will have to wait until after the holidays. It will just have to be a "room in progress." Oh -- and speaking of projects, Mr. Jones has a rather huge one too. HIS side of the basement is in pretty bad shape too. I took a picture of it and was going to add it into this post; however, Mr. Jones came into the office while I was in the middle of loading pictures and requested that I not include that picture. He didn't demand I remove it, he just looked so troubled that I would put a picture of his train layout in my blog when it was in THAT condition ... he insists that he will have it in working order by the time the grandchildren arrive. You should see it! It looks like a giant jigsaw puzzle that is missing a great many pieces! But he has been working on it for several days now ...
I had intended to start cleaning out the basement first thing Monday morning, because I had hoped to have our Christmas cards all finished this weekend -- but I ran into some creative roadblocks with the design along the way and didn't finish until late Tuesday night. We don't mail out all that many cards, but 60 cards take some time to put together if you are making them yourself. This morning, I was working on putting them together. Thomas K. has gotten rather fond of me (something about that salmon I give him, and the Half & Half he regularly drinks) and follows me all around the house. See my loyal little puppy sitting at my feet? Well, back to work ...