My Big Dirty Secret

If you watched the show Friends you know that Monica was a neat freak. She was OCD, and everything had to be perfect. You might remember an episode where Chandler opens her closet and finds a jumbled mess. I must confess that while I also have OCD tendencies, my dirty secret is much, much bigger than Monica’s closet. I have been writing this blog for six months now, and you may have noticed that despite mentioning the existence of a basement, I have never shown any pictures of said basement. This is why. This is my shame. I am going to open up and show this to you, but you have to promise that you are not going to turn me in to the show Hoarders. I swear this basement is not going to look like this forever. And down the stairs we go.

Turning right at the bottom of the stairs is the “work area.” As hard as it might be to believe while looking at the pictures, work does actually occur in this space.

In the corner is my great-grandmother’s table that I plan to refinish and use in the dining room someday. Oh yeah, and there is a LOT of other junk in front of it. I found the Moosehead Beer box with the checkerboard lid in the trash by my house, and I just used it in another project that I will write about next week. So, there is one less object in this space.

The boxes under the table have the tile for the kitchen back splash and floor and for the bathroom floor. I am hoping to do the kitchen floor over spring break. The other two projects will more likely occur in the summer. This is one benefit to being a teacher.

This is where we keep all of the tools.

Here are more shelves.

Our bikes are also on a rack in this section of the basement.

Here is the bike rack. There are four bikes here and two on the other side of the basement.

On the other side of the bike rack under the stairs we have a wine fridge and a LOT of Vernor’s Ginger Ale. Something my Indiana man cannot live without.

Behind the “work area” is the storage space. Douglas has a lot of clothes hanging here since he does not have much closet space upstairs. This is also where we hang the clothes to dry in the winter. In the summer, we hang them on a line outside.

We also have a lot of shelving and plastic tubs.

In the back under the kitchen is the laundry room.

Across from “storage space” is Douglas’ office. That is his desk hidden behind the rack of clothes.

There are stacks of things on the floor as well. That wooden box is a wine crate that I hung in the kitchen and wrote about here.

In front of the office is the media area. Douglas set up the other two of bikes on trainers so that we can ride through the winter. You might ask why there are two television sets. I ask all the time, but my husband refuses to get rid of either one.

There is a cabinet/bar set up in front of the stairs beside a kegerator.

Here is what is in front of the televisions. A BIG MESS!

Behind the televisions are piles of things that we are planning to get rid of.

We are getting rid of most of the things on the shelves beside the television as well.

The biggest reason that we have such a mess in the basement is that we combined two households into one. Douglas moved in just before the wedding, and we were so overwhelmed with the planning of the momentous event that we just threw everything down in the basement. Because of the wedding, Douglas did not do as much training for triathlon season as he would have liked, and he focused on that for the rest of the summer. Once school started, we were too busy to sort through the mess downstairs. Going into the basement gives me a panic attack, but luckily I do not have to go down there often. I know that it will someday be clean, uncluttered and organized, but I also know that probably will not happen until this summer when I have time to dedicate to the cleaning, uncluttering and organization of the space. I have been blessed with a wonderful husband, however, who is helping with the situation. Since, these pictures were taken he has made some positive changes already. Most importantly, he moved the clothes that had been hanging in the middle of the rooms. The wardrobe beside his desk was left in the basement by the previous owners. Half of it was taken up by this hanging bag where I store my out-of-season clothes.

Douglas hung a bar in the storage area next to my shoe rack for the hanging bag. The shoe rack is the one area that I am proud of in the basement. I will do a post about it someday.