Sunday's Basement Challenge

Our precious children have been battling the sickies for a few days so we decided to cancel all commitments for Saturday and Sunday.  We felt it was best to stay at home trying to rest up and refrain from hacking on friends at church.  Aren't we so kind?!  I am thankful that even though I've felt on the verge of getting sick, too, I've somehow avoided it.  That is not to say that I've avoided some yucky pregnancy symptoms in the past few days, but I'm thankful that sniffles and coughing haven't added more discomfort to my puke-a-day status.

Today while the kids were having an imaginary wilderness adventure through out the house, Mike and I began the process of tackling our basement.  Part of the basement is finished and mainly functions as a playroom.  The unfinished portion of the basement is perfect for storage.  The only problem is that we've essentially done nothing with either of these spaces since we moved into our house back in August.  Over Christmas time, we did unpack and store school curriculum, games, and kid's art supplies on built in bookshelves.  But overall, talk about rooms and disorganization that make you cringe every time you see it...

Mike cleaned out the storage area and reorganized some of our storage bins...canning supplies, extra home decor items (that I certainly have a plan for...grin), sleeping bags and suitcases, etc.  I started sorting the four large moving boxes that have contained the kids' toys.  As I'm sure you can imagine, over the course of eight months, the boxes have become a huge mess.  I purged, and I mean REALLY purged those boxes.  We kept the favorites - Legos, K'nex, Nerf items, army men and a variety of Star Wars figurines, marble and rock/gem collections, and the most loved costumes.  We have many items that I'm happy to donate to our church garage sale or thrift store.

The kids were basically banned from the basement while I sorted toys though they kept "needing" us for one thing or another.  I think they were mostly curious about what long lost toy they didn't remember they had that they didn't miss that was buried on the bottom of the boxes.  I pretty much said, "Do whatever you want right now...eat another popscicle for lunch...watch another show...eat more candy...blow your nose while you're at it...just please go upstairs so you don't cry over what I'm throwing out...(bottle caps from a "collection"...eeewwww, kept touching sticky caps with my fingers, silly bands, Chinese fortunes, fast food toys, broken items, and other junk...er, I mean, collections.  Usually I give them "one save" from items leaving our house on purging days like today, but I didn't this time. 

I just didn't. 

And I'm okay with that. 

And they didn't ask for a save. 

I don't have an after picture to show you yet, but trust me, it's a lot better!!!  We still have to take care of a relatively small amount of items saved and separated for the boys, for Sadie, and for other places in the house.  But it is so doable!!!  Next stop, the boys' room!

P.S.  An update about my last post Saturday's Laundry Challenge:  Between the weekend and the following Monday, I gained control of the laundry situation.  Each of the eight or so loads I washed were folded and put away right away.  I figure that if I do one load of laundry a day and have the kids put items away as soon as I'm done folding, I should be able to stay on top of it!

P.P.S.  I also made a menu plan for the last week and this week...oh yeah, getting a handle on life again!  And feeling so much better because of it!!!

P.P.P.S.  Mike was so kind to do some painting for me on Friday and Saturday by eliminating the "accent walls" in our dining room and family room...I'll post pictures later.  Oh boy, what a difference a coat of paint makes in how a room looks and in how I feel!!!

Early nesting, anyone?!