Winnow & Spruce Organizing: Come on an Adventure to your Basement

This summer I had the pleasure of organizing a few basements. It was a fine time to escape the heat and I was grateful for the work.

A basement packed full of unused clutter and boxes of dusty items can weigh down a house and its occupants. Clients are hesitant to open the door and show me around. They always say, “I hate coming down here.” as we walk down the steps into the mess. I feel their pain.

Perhaps you feel this way about your own basement. Maybe it has become a catch all for grown children’s discards, a memorial of boxes piled high to honor deceased parents or grandparents, a storage area for furniture that doesn’t fit in the rest of the house. If you’re like most clients, you aren’t even sure what’s down there!

Often it’s the hold out in an otherwise organized home. After all, it’s off the beaten path, and except maybe to do laundry or change out the furnace filter, it rarely has a visitor. Without a steady stream of traffic, it is an easy place to neglect.

But, I tell you in all honesty, the day will come when you’ll have to face it. For some it’s a crisis – such as a sudden divorce or death requiring the house to be cleaned up and sold. For others it’s a child or relative moving back in and finding nowhere to store their things. Most likely it is an unpleasant gnawing feeling in your gut that things are out of control and a growing realization that the time has come to handle it.

Isn’t it good to know you’re not alone? Let’s go an adventure together and see what we find.

Unfortunately, we nearly always find evidence of mice. They love hiding under and behind items stored on the floor.

And always spiders too. They hang out in dark corners and the ceiling. Grab the vacuum!

So once we get things sorted and areas cleaned up, we designate zones for items that belong together and we try to move as much as we can off the floor. It makes it so much easier to clean!