In our home, few things cause more frustration, anger, annoyance, and downright disgust from Wendy than the general state of our basement. She's routinely upset at the heightened level of disaster I allow in the basement, but it's by no means just a storage area. I'm the first to admit, it's seen better days. Like the first few weeks after we moved in, back when we hadn't yet unpacked our boxes and didn't yet own many tools.
Though our basement is quite large, roughly 15' by 30', it's unfortunately become our defacto laundry room/food pantry/storage area/dog washing station/project staging area/utility closet/woodshop/anything else we need to do with it. As you can probably guess, at any given moment we're actively using our basement for multiple projects and laundry, so the juggling act is not always easy. This has lead to a rather unsightly and disorganized mess.
We've made several attempts to organize the space, including building shelves, rearranging items, and collecting ans begrudgingly discarding loose wood scraps, but the nature of our ongoing projects tends to get us back to square one disaster in less time than we'd like.
From time to time, the basement can truly get out of hand. When this happens, and Wendy inadvertently gets separated from the pack and wanders into the basement alone, all bets are off. Moments like these usually start out as a goodwill gesture and offer of assistance. "Hey, I went into the basement and it's in need of a little tidying. Do you want me to help you clean it up?"
At face value, it's a simple and generous request. What I hear her saying is, "Hey, I noticed the mounting problem and I want to help." What she's actually saying is "The basement is a f#@$ing disaster, I'm about to divorce you because I just almost broke my neck tripping over some of the wood and tools you've left laying around because you are an insensitive jerk and don't want to find an appropriate place to put it, I borderline hate you and can't believe you've made me live like this, don't you see what I see, let's go into the basement and try to clean while I yell at you, and I better go down the stairs first because if I follow you down there it's just as likely that I'll push you down the stairs and make it look like an accident and we'll never even get to cleaning. Were you raised by wolves?" I've just re-read that several times ans I feel it is a very accurate depiction of the typical events, if I do say so myself.
I used to accept her offer of helping me clean until I learned better after 10 or so attempts. I may not be a quick man.
The thing is, she's 100% right, and I'm secure in my person enough to admit this. The basement is a disaster. There's too much down there and not enough room. The fact I'm using it as a wood shop makes it dirtier/dustier than it should be, and this is a bad thing since so much tends to revolve around being clean (laundry, food storage, dog baths, etc).
One of our resolutions for 2013 is to rid the basement of the hulking oil drum in the corner. It's currently hidden behind some drywall and peg boards to the left of the washer and dryer. But I know it's not just a quick and easy task of removal, especially if we can't even get back in that area to remove it.
Throughout 2012, and as 2012 turned into 2013, I slowly and methodically worked to get a handle on the basement. I made a point to throw at least one thing away or put away at least one of my tools I wasn't using every time I was in the basement. Sometimes I'd work for a few minutes, others an hour or more, but over time I started to notice a slow but significant reduction in the general mess.
After Christmas this year, where I was the fortunate recipient of many new and wonderful tools, I was faced with a problem. Where would I be able to put them?
More on those tools in the coming days. Before I'll ever get a chance to use them I think I'll need a good location for them. I glanced over at my rudimentary workbench and this is what I saw.
How had it gotten so bad? At that moment I resolved to clean and better organize the space, yet again. I worked for a few hours and slowly put everything in its rightful place. After a significant effort, our tools had been wrangled and my workbench was once again able to support work.
Another area of our basement that had reached maximum capacity was the small food storage shelf we'd been using for years.
This shelf, built by my parents in the 1970s, was made from particle board that had been sanded and stained. Who knew you could do that with particle board?
When my parents came to Alexandria for Christmas this year they brought a great little gift. They had an antique cabinet in their garage they weren't using any longer and asked if we wanted it.
Absolutely! It's a great rustic old piece that will work well in our basement to better protect the items it's storing. It's wider, deeper, and nicer than that old 1970s shelf.
I went ahead and filled all of our stuff back into the new cabinet, and after a few minutes all of our stuff had only filled about 2/3 of the cabinet's space. Perfect!
I've continued to work to organize the basement a little further and am quite happy to report that I am able to successfully maneuver throughout the basement without issue. It's rather easy to work down there, and I'm getting pretty excited for the day the oil drum is removed.
I'm planning an additional workbench to replace the drum that will allow my various larger tools a more permanent home. Things like the miter saw and mortiser. Only time will tell, but I think it will be far more functional.
I'm also looking forward to the day when we remove the clawfoot tub from its seemingly eternal resting place. The tub is nearing 100 years old, buts already spent almost 10% of its life in our basement. Don't let Wendy's smile in the photo fool you, that tub now wears a sad face.
We're going to need to find a good company to refinish it for us. I'm not interested in using the spray paint for this application but am extremely interested in what this "No Spray Tubs" is offering. Sadly, the company we were going to use went out of business, so we need to find a different local place that uses the same technology. I guess that tells you just how long we've actually been working on the master bathroom project.
In the meantime, I'm hoping my efforts haven't gone unnoticed with Wendy. Ultimately, she's the one I'm trying to impress with all of my organizing and cleaning. Mel and Lulu could care less, actually, I think they prefer the mess.
What cleaning projects have you been up to? Are you like us, in that the start of a new year makes you want to purge and reduce? I don't know what it is, but we get in this mood every January.
