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You are here: Home / Homekeeping / The shameful basement

The shameful basement

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Homekeeping, Simplifying, The Victorian

The kitchen is almost complete, but I’m going to wait until I have the rest of the room painted (this week) to show you the photos.  In the mean time, we worked from early morning to after 8 pm yesterday cleaning up the basement, installing lighting and rewiring a bunch of poorly done electrical work.

Since we moved in, we have tried organizing the basement (as in a full day of organizing) at least a half-dozen times.  And still, it has been a constant mess.  If it weren’t for the fact that our washer and dryer are down there, I’m not sure there would even be a path to walk through half the time.  So we’re organizing my favorite way: getting rid of stuff.

organizing the basement

We do have at least two of most of our tools, partly because we often work on large projects together, and it’s way easier for each of us to have our own.  But often, when we start a project early on a Sunday morning, we spend a good hour attempting to gather all the tools from the basement.  Some of which, we cannot find because tools are all just in random boxes, piled on top of each other.  We end up giving up the search and going to the store to buy the tool again.  It’s terrible.

Then we finally tackle our project mid-day and all the tools we used go into a random box, and then back to the basement to start over.

organizing the basement

This is why, when I started learning more about serious simplifying and minimalism, I was really struck by a couple lines from the Organizing post from The Minimalists:

“No matter how organized we are, we must continue to care for the stuff we organize, cleaning and sorting our methodically structured belongings. When we get rid of the superfluous stuff, however, we can focus on life’s more important aspects…Or we could, of course, reorganize our basement again.  Once the excess stuff is out of the way, staying organized is much easier anyway.”

So yesterday, in addition to the re-wiring we had to do, we decided that we were organizing the basement, for the last time.  In order to do that, we have to get rid of stuff.  A lot of stuff.

organizing the basement

These photos were taken before our big yard sale, so some of the junk was already gone, but the spots were just filled in with more stuff.  We burned all the random, useless pieces of wood in the fire pit, put a big free sign on the curb and piled loads of stuff out there, and we filled up two garbage cans of trash.  It looks a lot better this morning, but we’re not done.  Hence, the lack of “After” photos in this post.  We’re going to continue this project this week, along with finishing the stairs and the kitchen.  And then, hopefully by the end of the month, we will have a nice, simplified, organized basement to show you.

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  1. Leena

    October 14, 2013 at 5:46 pm

    Whoa! This is big! Hope everything finds it’s place and you know later where that place is 😀

    Are you two in the same page about simplifying? Is it easier for you or him or as easy for both? You seem to let go of so much stuff and a similar thing could never really happen with me and A. He loves stuff (okey, I love some too…)

    Reply
    • Christina

      October 15, 2013 at 12:31 pm

      We’re pretty much on the same page. He doesn’t want to get rid of quite as much as I do, but we are both doing the simplifying.

      We loved the stuff too at some point, that’s why we had it all! Now we love getting rid of it. 😀

  2. Karen

    October 14, 2013 at 10:30 pm

    Wow I wished I lived close to you. I’m out of work right now so can’t afford a lot of things, plus I’m a pack rat. 😉 I think our house is a folk Victorian also, it has only two bedrooms but we have really high ceilings. Some past owner did a lot of updating, so we have a decent kitchen, bathroom, and washer and dryer hookups. But once I start working again I want to do things around here to update the house but without destroying the history of it.
    I like you blog and look forward to reading more.

    Reply
    • Christina

      October 15, 2013 at 12:25 pm

      Haha, well if you’re a pack rat, I’m glad you don’t live close…I don’t want to add to your problem. 🙂 High ceilings are so nice, ours are all oddly well under 8 feet. Hopefully you’ll find work again soon and can start fixing your place up!

  3. Karen

    October 15, 2013 at 1:49 am

    You are NOT alone! I feel like I could have written this post- my basement is pretty much yours’ twin when it comes to clutter, tools, etc. I keep trying to organize- I make progress, then regress. Lately I’ve been more determined- trying to spend a little time down there each night- eating the elephant a bite at a time. Good luck on your basement!

    Reply
    • Christina

      October 15, 2013 at 12:19 pm

      You too Karen! Are you going to post about it?

  4. Anonymous

    October 15, 2013 at 4:37 am

    For us it’s the garage – that has no room to have a car parked in.
    At least 4-5 times a year we’ll devote a Sunday to reorganizing, but then we do the work around the house and things don’t get put back where they go, usually because we’re tired or a child is needing our attention and it gets unmanageable again and we start all over.
    I’m not really sure we have much in there that could just be tossed though, so I guess we’re stuck

    Reply
    • Christina

      October 15, 2013 at 12:18 pm

      I felt that way for quite a while too–like there wasn’t anything we had that we could do without. But now that we’ve been doing this for a while, we can even go through rooms that we have simplified twice, and still find items we don’t actually need. And it feels so good. 🙂

      Maybe these articles will help, if you’re interested. Start here and Just in case.

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  1. A new, dark dining room - Little Victorian says:
    November 15, 2013 at 9:46 am

    […] while I was working on the basement, I went over our over-stuffed paint shelf again.  We had already gotten rid of all of the […]

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Update: the MCM is officially sold! We did eventua Update: the MCM is officially sold! We did eventually finish most of our restoration/renovation projects. I'll share the updates in the coming months as we get settled in to our new place. 😁
House update! The realtor is still confused about House update! The realtor is still confused about why "it's such a popular house." When she arrived yesterday for a showing, there were 8 cars in the driveway. 😃

We had three offers the first day, one of whom hadn't even seen the house in person yet.
Surprise! The house is going on the market today. Surprise! The house is going on the market today. (Long story that I'll fill you in on when I have more than 2 seconds.)
.
But we're once again with a realtor that calls our house "unique" instead of calling it a Mid Century Modern. 🤦‍♀️
.
We can't count how many locals came into this house and mentioned that those windows should be removed and walled up and the beams cut off. And then it would be a "normal" house. 🤯
.
Still can't really identify with people in this area. 🤷‍♀️ SO happy to be going back home to the East coast TOMORROW!
Right? We're getting back into the house restorat Right? 
We're getting back into the house restoration and we'll be working on the powder room in the master bed. 
Guys. It's bad. Swipe to see.
And we're going to try to make it pretty with a super tiny budget of $100 in 4 weeks and we're joining the #100roomchallenge to keep us (me) motivated.
The bedroom design is starting to come together th The bedroom design is starting to come together thanks to Craigslist and Goodwill. 
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