Attacking the Basement

There aren't enough hours in our break to get our basement looking like this.

Last night, I asked my husband to find a home for a mattress topper we'd purchased and rejected. Chances are good that it should go to the trash pile (and that at some point it still will), but it was one of those expensive mistakes that we can't quite get rid of. Yet.

Like so many other no-longer-useful items in our house, it ended up in the basement, which ended up sparking the discussion we have at least twice a year at my house.

We really need to clean out the basement.

While I agree, there never seems to be a good time to do it. From time to time, I take my own advice and chip away at a section, but progress continues to be of the one step forward, two steps back variety. Invariably, once a space is emptied, it becomes a magnet for something else we don't know what to do with/can't bear to part with.

Certain spots in the house tend to become clutter magnets, attracting every item we want out of the way, either temporarily or on a more permanent basis. As I analyze the cringe-worthy collection in our basement, I see two culprits at work: time and indecision. We always seem to have too little of the first and too much of the second.

As a former school counselor, I know that identifying the problem is the first step to solving it. While I can't create more of the former, I can be determined to utilize less of the latter. In other words, in the next few weeks, while everyone is on vacation, we need to set aside time to tackle the task and approach it with the determination to be decisive.

This is, of course, easier said than done. No one is excited to spend vacation time cleaning out the basement, and no one immediately becomes decisive at the snap of a finger.

So, the goals need to be realistic. An entire week going through items one by one? Not gonna happen. Setting aside several hours (perhaps adding up to an entire day) over the course of break to make some headway? More likely.

As for decisiveness,  I know how it's done; I just need to do it. Three piles: keep, don't keep and not sure. Everything we keep will need a home. Whatever we don't keep will need a destination, and whatever we're not sure about will need a deadline.

So, here I am, going public. Feel free to hold me accountable. Despite the fact that I write about this stuff, there are tasks I find odious and this is one of them. When that's the case, we sometimes need a little nudge, or even some partners in the process. Join me, nudge me, ask me how it's going.

It is, after all, a process.