A little basement cleaning

Confession: I love having a basement. The storage rocks.

Basements were foreign to us when we moved here. Growing up in Texas, neither of us had basements in our parents' homes or in the home we owned. I wasn't sure what I thought about them initially, but over time, I've grown to love having one.

What I haven't loved is the mess ours has been for the last two years. The previous homeowner(s) left some of their own junk down there, and we added lots of our junk right on top of it. Stuff that never got unpacked. Scattered tools. Lots of dirt and spiderwebs. It was in sad shape.

Over the course of the last few months, we've organized a little here and a little there, and this weekend, we tackled the last bit of it. It's finally "presentable." I use that word loosely, but it is in the best shape it's been in since we moved here.

Now I'm going to share some "after" photos. I share these knowing full well that (1) this is likely only exciting to me and (2) that unless you've ever seen our basement, you won't get a full appreciation for what we've done. But since I haven't posted any Mirabelle stories in a while, I thought I'd toss this one out anyway.

Our basement is unfinished and has lots different "rooms" in it. This is our paint/supply storage room. We tossed more than a dozen cans of paint that have been passed down from homeowner to homeowner over the last several decades. The only cans in here now are ours.

And here's the area where we organized all of the stuff that needed to be unpacked. Look at all that floor space! Neatly swept, too. =) And I know that right hand side looks like a big pile of mess, but if you look at it from another angle, it's neatly organized, too, thanks to a new shelf that Jerry hung for me last weekend.

And last, but not least (in fact, it's my favorite part of the basement clean-up) is the laundry area.

I hate having to go down to the drab and dreary basement for laundry. Ugh! So I thought if I could spruce it up a bit, maybe it would be a bit less dreadful. So I asked Jerry to install a rod (steel pipe) so that I could hang an extra canvas drop cloth we had lying around. We put it behind the washer and dryer to hide all of the pipes that run along the wall. And then I plugged in a little lamp. And had Jerry hang an old piece of art that I wasn't using in the main part of the house. There was a red rug (commercial grade) already down in the basement, so I vacuumed it and pulled it over and what do ya know! It's kind of cozy, right? Well, that's relative, I know. But it's much more cozy than what we had before. Right, Mom?