Basement AR - Breathing Life Into Something Dead

This basement is a major source of stress and embarassment for me. And it doesn't help Feng Shui since our whole house rests on this mess. The last time it started accumulating clutter, I cleaned the whole thing up in grade 10 so I could have a small Christmas party... It hasn't been tidied since. To put time in perspective for you, I've just graduated college. And yet, it's become so messy I can't even reach the walls to take down the old decorations! OY VHEY! This totally CROSSES THE LINE from cluttered basement, to screaming hell hole.

So after years of bugging them about it with no success (albeit they do live incredibly busy lives, I think this kind of clutter is just nuts), I decided that once again I'd take it into my own hands. So far I had two large piles of flattened cardboard, one car FULL of toys and books for Goodwill, a Trunk full of old blankets and sheets for the Humane Society, 5 large items for the garbage pickup, and about 10 garbage bags of odds and ends and other junk.

After all that, this picture is the result. Yes, this is actually the after picture for Step one. Notice that you can actually see a bit of the floor. Step two will be much like the first, but this time I'll have a place down there to sort things.