Still going strong on the basement organizational project. My husband says I don’t have much room in the garage to store stuff until we do the garage sale, and I told him to make room because I’m in the mood to get rid of this stuff, get the classroom finished and take all in this challenge! Wait a minute? What challenge am I talking about? Are you just tuning in to the challenge I’m taking part in? You can read more on my introductory blog post to this challenge hosted by OrgJunkie.com.
So, here’s the progress report. Despite being shorted 3 days due to travel for my direct sales job, I got an amazing amount of work done! I’m not so good on the before and after shots, but here’s another little sneak peek from a different angle than I shared with you last week. I’ll explain a bit below since I didn’t really get the shot from the exact same angle.
Sorry, I couldn’t get the image bigger, not sure what’s up with my computer today. Anyway, the before shot is just a little to the left of shot in the right. I know that’s an obvious for the picture placement, I’m talking about the stuff in the pictures. On the right edge of the before shot, just above the word before is a workout bench, and it’s the same workout bench in the same place on the after shot, just above the word after. In the before shot the cute giraffe bike is moved out for garage sale, the can with the purple lid (full of pinecones) is being retained for homeschooling crafts and has been place in it’s new home on top of the book shelf. Next to that is a Brita water pitcher. Not sure why it’s there, but it was and has since been moved to a more logical place. The weights are still there and need to be cleaned and so is the swiss ball, but the ball will find a new home as soon as we get a little more arranging done.
The stack of boxes is huge in the before picture. You can see in the after picture that the stack has been greatly reduced. I’m hoping to break down those boxes and get rid of them yet tonight. Also in the after picture is a big box that had a computer in it behind the white shelves. That box has been removed and the computer recycled at Best Buy. It was over a decade old! I’m so glad to finally be rid of that beast. The boxes lining the wall that had already been broken down are now gone and ready for recylcing. My husband joked that it only took him 8 years to convince me to get rid of them. I told him it was still my idea, he begs to differ. I’ll agree to disagree on this one.
Underneath the gigantic box mess is our sump for the house. I don’t want the kids messing around there, or even being the slightest bit enticed to mess around that area so I wanted it covered. That means I had to come up with something to store there. We decide this would be the perfect place to put all of the books we aren’t getting rid of for homeschooling, but that the kids aren’t old enough for. Then, since we don’t know if we’re going to have another baby, the clothes we decide to keep for now will also go in that stack of totes. On top of that will be holiday decorations since we’ll most likely be getting to those sooner then later. I love this set up because it serves the purpose of hiding the sump, it’s in the corner and I can keep those small white shelves there to store some of the smaller boxes of crafts and supplies for homeschooling.
Also in the after picture is a huge stack of plastic containers and totes. Every single one of those totes are empty! They are all waiting to either be repurposed, sold or donated. In other words, this section is fairly well clean and just waiting on further areas to be completed.
Progress totals:
- 8 bags of trash were removed from the basement (mainly old papers and school works I retrieved from binders and file cabinets)
- 8 more boxes of Garage sale items were removed (these were smaller boxes than the last time)
- 6 more boxes of Goodwill items were removed and donated.
- 1 computer taking up a ton of space was recycled. Computers were behemoth 10 years ago!
- Totes and items belonging to other people were removed and arrangements were made to return them to their rightful owner (or in some cases this has already been done).
- Starting to arrange homeschooling items in their new homes and bringing more homeschooling items down to the area.
- Plans for the shelving and arranging of shelves is being made now that we have more space.
- Stacks of boxes have been broken down and ready for recycling.
- Bags of paper mailing padding have been removed and placed ready for recycling.
I’m so excited about the progress I’m making downstairs! I can’t wait to see what I’ll come up with next. It seems the more I clean and have an idea for the room, the more things seem to click and make sense. I’m getting more creative with the space and having an all around great time! I can’t wait to see the finished project and how well it compares with the image in my head.
Have you ever taken on an organizational project? Tell me about it in the comments.
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You’ve been hard at work! Keep it up, your progress is terrific!
hsmominmo recently posted…Slow But Sure – Organization Update
You’ve got as much or more trash going out as we do! Ha!
Jenny recently posted…How to feed 16 people fast: Mock Cheesesteak
Oh my Jenny, there is so much we can’t fit it all in our trash bin outside…the one that is never full, LOL. I love it though. It’s all paperwork that I thought I needed to keep for some reason. It feels amazing to purge it all, knowing I’ll never have to deal with it again!