Project Work

Yesterday was Geoff's second weekday being home between old job and new job.  And it was a productive day.

Ever since our basement reno last winter, I've been needing and wanting to get down there to start some major organizing.  One of the two unfinished areas down there is a good-sized space that is supposed to be a combination of workshop and storage room.  It's an utter disaster.  Hmm, I should have taken a 'before' picture - never thought about it...though it would have been embarrassing to post it!  In the workshop part, there are paint cans galore, endless amounts of tools and nails and screws and nuts and bolts and every other such thing known to man.  In the half that is supposed to be for storage, numerous large and unnecessary items hog the space, so that when we finished most of the basement last winter, all of the stuff that legitimately needed to be stored there ended up in what will be our homeschool workspace (which is almost finished, but needs carpeting, some shelving and a workspace/desk area).

So, you can imagine that the first thing on my (long) to-do list of things to accomplish while Geoff's between jobs is clearing out and organizing that workshop/storage room.  Yesterday, we started the process of moving some of the heavy stuff out there, things we want to give away:  anyone want a huge, green workbench/table that was left in the basement by the previous owner? no?  I'm shocked.  How 'bout a huge, old, scratched up, white, pleather-covered rocking chair that my pack-rat-oriented husband picked up from someone's garbage pile two years ago and which has been collecting dust down there ever since because I outlawed its presence in any other room of the house (he's finally agreed, under threat of torture, to get rid of the thing...j.k., sort of, about the torture)?  And then there's the stuff we want to sell:  a couple of large and clunky oak book cases/cabinets that take up a huge amount of room and don't really have that much to offer in terms of functional book shelving (which I really could use); a nice, old pine trunk that was given to me years ago but which doesn't go with anything we own and which we don't have space for; and a bunch of other miscellaneous stuff.

Yesterday morning, after pawning Matthew off finding a playdate for Matthew for a few hours, Geoff and I made a start on my our project.  We cleaned and moved out a bunch of that giveaway and saleable crap stuff out from the back of the workshop/storage room and put up a bunch of shelving along the back wall, which we were promptly able to load up with various bins of stuff (all of the seasonal stuff for Christmas, Halloween, Easter, etc etc etc).  With just a few hours' work behind us, we can already see a pretty significant difference.  Because I'm not working at all this week (outside the home, anyway!), I've lined up a few more hours of childcare on Thursday so that we can continue this nasty-but-productive job.

As I said to Geoff towards the end of our clean-up time, my mood lightens and my spirits soar a bit higher with every piece of junk we take out of there...I'm sure many of you can relate to that!!

* Thanks for the comment Kristin.  I'll 'up' your old nordic ski machine thingee with a grandparent-era set of something resembling cross-country skis...not pretty.