More about the crime scene

I promised a few more pictures of our crime scene recently organized basement. I consider myself a semi-minimalist, always wanting to minimize more and so all of this still feels like a lot of stuff. But Christmas decorations and my husband's sporting equipment have to go somewhere.  Pictures from high school and college that I have meticulously organized in albums are important to save but don't need to jam up  the office bookshelves. Enter  "the Rubbermaid bin".   You will see evidence of the label maker in action. All in all...it's functional and that is all that matters. We didn't spend any money organizing the basement...just used bins we had. It is not magazine worthy but I am pretty sure Real Simple isn't calling this week to set up their next photo shoot.

That large black monstrosity is an old boiler no longer in use and was taking up a ton of space. I got a quote to see how much it would  cost to remove it and I can't remember exactly but I think it was like $3 million. So, my DAD built this awesome shelf above it that holds so much stuff. In general, dads rock.  Handy dads are the bomb.

   

There is just little part to finish. My laundry basket is being held hostage. These are items collected from the basement that need to be put away in my husbands closet/office.

But the basement.

Hallelujah.

The Crime Scene that yielded fifty bucks

I have been MIA lately and the action has been taking place in our basement. Getting married at the very end of 2011 meant merging two fully furnished homes into one. Not so easy peezy. Planning a wedding + going to work everyday = "put it in the basement until we have more time". We finally tackled the basement and it took more than a minute.

Here WAS just one little corner of the basement. You'd think it was a crime scene.

Those are Christmas Lights hanging  in the middle of the picture. The ROCKY box is our collection of Rocky movies. Nooooo....just some hiking boots. The rest...who knows. Miracle Grow next to some tape next to a gas tank next to a sewing machine. Good times.

But here is the "after" of that little corner of the world:

And yes, that filing cabinet WAS in the "before" picture.

Here is where I was trying to do laundry:

Opening the top of the washer presented a problem.

But now....



(Someone should vacuum that rug.) Pay no attention to our window treatments   packing paper on the window. It makes me feel better that the mean people will stay out.

Every bin is labeled. (More pictures to come). And we can find anything we need in 10 seconds. If you know me, you would be shocked to know the basement looked like this (Sorry, Kim D). Life just took over...like it does... but now we are back to the races. And the best part is that I found all these treasures from my husband's house that I would have eventually bought. Thing like:

-a pair of scissors for the butcher block

-a huge box of yard bags

-Febreeze

-awesome unused sponges

-etc etc

He also found $50.00. That should excite me a little more than the scissors, but somehow it doesn't.

Organize something in your house and I bet the event will save you some money. We found a bag of these metal plate things that you use to connect two boards. My husband bought them for $.97 a piece at Lowes. He still had the receipt. It was from 2005. I returned them but because the stock number had changed, they gave us the price they sell them for now....$1.11 for each.  I think there were 13. He made a $1.82 profit for holding onto those things for 7 years. I think that is a better return than the bank is paying on my money market.