The basement has gotten out of hand again. Although it was a picture of perfect order last winter, during our chaotic year, it became everyone’s catch-all.
Last week Nelson built some custom shelves to organize one category of chaos: paint cans and paint clothes, brushes and turpentine, rollers and roller pans, scrapers and cutting tools, drop cloths and rags. After watching disorder give way to order, I was eager to tackle other areas of basement chaos.
The giant shelves Nelson built last year have become overloaded and messy, although I can’t take full blame. When Louisa and Birgitta left their Chicago apartment to pursue studies in Hawaii and Iowa, all their possessions came to our basement. Then, after Nelson emptied his storage facility in Tennessee, that truck load of stuff also came toward Michigan but didn’t get past our driveway.
He assessed the basement with its narrow aisles winding between stacks of debris, and together we decided a small storage unit was the answer, at least for now. We gathered everything we wouldn’t need to see or touch for a year, as well as everything from Chicago and Nashville, and hauled it to the storage facility. How nice to see the basement floor again.
If I had to choose one word as a banner over my last five years it would be “packing.” And of course where there’s packing, there’s unpacking. The truth about the basement is that most of it belongs to me. Boxes and bins have been my constant companions, but I’m learning to ask, “How much of this should I save?”
I grew up under the influence of a Depression Era mother who kept a box marked, “Bits of string too short to save.” She once told me, “I could live off your garbage.”
Mom also collected the water from her wash machine and reused it to wash floors. She’d defend herself by saying, “During the Depression we couldn’t afford soap and had to make our own. This soapy water shouldn’t be wasted.”
She’d tell visitors, “If I find one pea on the floor, I make pea soup.” They thought she was kidding.
Although Mom had endless ways to save money, her Depression-logic moved her to save everything else, too. She was sure our shoes from 7th grade would be back in fashion soon. The plastic lid from a gallon of ice cream could be used as a Frisbee. Pencils could still write, even if they were too short to hold. Old rubber bands made wonderful dental floss.
Where’s the line between sensible and silly? I asked myself that question thousands of times as we downsized our old house and eliminated half of everything. After the move, we eliminated half again, and now the basement. Give away? Put away? Throw away? Handling and categorizing each item is exhausting.
So here we are again, having rented another storage unit, sorted through more stuff, filled more bins and relocated heaps of possessions. I know my kids’ things won’t stay long, and those aren’t what concern me. Instead, I’m looking critically at my own stockpiles. What’s worth keeping? What’s not?
As always, our practical Bible has the answer.
“Don’t store up treasures here on earth where moths eat them and rust destroys them and where thieves break in and steal.” (Matthew 6:19)
Beautiful post!!
After the thieves broke into a storage unit, and took only my boxes, not Jim’s, I vowed I would never again mark the contents of the boxes, on the box lids. It makes it too easy for the thieves to select what they would like to have. I also recommend that you don’t put anything in storage, that you really want to keep for the kids. I suggest you mark them A,B,C, and keep a list of contents at home.
Oh, this is so my year, too, having moved and downsized in July, gotten rid of enough to furnish two other houses. My kids have chided me for keeping things, but I’ll tell you, they know where to go when they need some oddball thing. I always seem to have it. 🙂
I’m glad I’m in good company. It is hard to sort through memories and decide what to keep. Our oldest will graduate from college in two weeks and I still have two bins from his early elementary years that I’ve never gone through. I’m putting an organizational weekend on the calendar for 2011 – until then I’m going to enjoy my clutter and the holidays.
We do like our ‘stuff’, don’t we?
At Bible study this week I learned that in the 1960s not one storage unit existed in the U.S. Shocking, isn’t it? They are a way of life now.
While our pastor from Accra came to visit, he got very quiet driving home from the airport. I was trying to see what he was so absorbed in…and finally he said..”What are those small flats? Do people live in them? Without windows?” And I got to break it to him that we have so much “stuff” that we pay people to keep it for us! What a cultural “moment”—seeing it thru an Africans’ eyes.
What memories! I remember how your Mom saved tin foil, folding it up in a drawer. My Mom always said that was why you folks had the financial security they had. Every time I throw a oiece of foil away, I think of her.
Oh how I can relate to your delima! Moving 11 times in 15 years – 4 times of that ws in one year – I came to the conclusion: If I can’t eat it, use it at least once a month, wear it….I don’t need to pay storage on it, dust it, and surely….there is someone else who could use it…and out it goes.
Of course, you may have ‘things’ the children will want….let them decide… and as time goes by…you, too, will come to your own conclusions of what’s useful, needed or not. It sure set me free of ‘stuff’.
Do a ‘chinese auction’…that should be fun.