gearing up for project:simplify • the basement (before)

Starting the first week in March I will be participating in Project: Simplify at Simple Mom. The timing of this project couldn’t be better, as I am anxious to de-winter my house—for whatever reason, winter always seems to be a season of getting bogged down with a ton of clutter, and spring cleaning is paralyzing because I can’t figure out what to do with it all.

So here I am, among (virtual) friends, with a plan and a goal and some direction—like a school assignment, rather than my usual wandering around for weeks before just boxing up everything I can’t figure out what to do with and shoving it in a corner of the attic. I’m pretty excited about it.

So excited, in fact, that I found myself wandering around the house early Sunday morning, wanting to get started. And since I didn’t want to ruin the project by starting on a likely “hot spot” early, I decided to tackle our basement.

{the shelves are a holdover from our basement in Buffalo—in both cases supplementing a tiny amount of cabinet space in the kitchen}

I was doing really well with organizing the basement when we first moved in; I had no choice, really, as more or less our entire kitchen—in boxes, of course—ended up there. My mother unpacked many of the basic necessities before Julia and I arrived from Buffalo, but there was so much more I needed in order to keep things running the way we were used to, and none of it was boxed together. So I spent our first few weekends here in the basement, unpacking boxes and trying to get things somewhat organized, but once I had unearthed most of what I use regularly in the kitchen my progress sort of…stalled…and the basement has remained in a half-unpacked state ever since.

I got quite a lot done on Sunday, but not everything. I should be able to finish this weekend, and then I will post “after” pictures.