This year, like every year, I planned multiple summer projects and so far I’ve managed to complete many of them. There is however one project that is not proceeding as well as I had hoped. The weather this summer is partly to blame – you see, I planned to work on reorganizing the basement on rainy days when it was too wet to work outside in the yard. There have been many days when it was too hot to work outside in the yard and it might actually be nice to spend some time in the basement but that little voice in my head always whispers ‘You are suppose to wait until it is raining‘ and of course it never does.
In my basement there is a twelve foot section of wall that is filled from floor to ceiling with plastic bins like this storing toys not currently in use;
Yes, they all have lovely labels describing what each bin contains. There are also labels on all the art supply storage boxes on shelves and other various spaces throughout the house. Visitors always comment on how organized I am. LOL
The problem is that some of those bins and boxes don’t actually contain what the label says they do. In fact, in the basement, beyond the locked door in the area that is off limits to the children there is loose stuff. Much of the loose stuff belongs in one of those labelled bins but it doesn’t fit in it because there is something in that bin that doesn’t belong in there. This is what happens when I plan too many weekend projects and don’t get around to rotating toys until late on Sunday then don’t have time to put things away properly. ‘I’ll fix it later’ I say. Well, this summer I intended to fix it – but it hasn’t rained enough so it is not done yet.
That’s not the confession. The confession is that – and this may not actually surprise anyone – I think I might be a hoarder. You see, along with reorganizing and putting things in their proper bins I also planned to purge – yes, I was going to get rid of stuff we don’t use. Stop laughing! I’m serious. That was, IS my plan.
Every weekend I get a little more done. Loose stuff and mystery boxes get spread out on the tables;
Some stuff gets boxed up to donate (it is kept out of sight so I won’t be tempted to take it back). There are several empty shelves in the basement now;
There are only a few ‘sorting boxes’ left on the basement floor;
At one point there was barely any room to walk in the basement but now there is plenty of space, several empty bins, and new labels have been made so everything is accurate.
I’d also like to point out that I think that my ‘problem’ may have been caused by elementary school teachers. It was my (now an adult) son’s Kindergarten teacher that asked me (and other parents) to collect milk jug lids and that is why I had a container full of hundreds of milk jug lids in the basement. If you still need them – too late, I don’t have them any more. I don’t have any shoe boxes either. All those sleepless nights fretting about how my child was going to fail diorama making because I didn’t buy shoes that came in boxes with lids. So, I started collecting shoe boxes – and now I just flattened dozens of them and overfilled my recycling bin.
I also have some extra space so I picked up a few more jungle animal toys. Didn’t really need more – I had some already but now I have families of jungle animals. I simply have to try and fit the new ones in the bin with the old ones.
I do still have a bin, two boxes and a shelf full of empty food and spice containers – I know I don’t need that many but I haven’t sorted through them to decide which ones are the most useful – remember, my recycling bin was too full. I still have time. Summer is not over yet and it might even rain sometime. Besides, sometimes it is really cold in the winter and I might want to do things inside. That is usually when I plan to defrost the freezers (which have a thick layer of ice now because last winter I waited too long and Spring arrived). Probably I should catch up on paperwork first though.
I may have other issues besides just hoarding stuff…
