I have a sporadic weekend hobby of going to estate sales, buying books, and then listing them on Etsy. Even though I only get to the sales every month or so, I started to accumulate a sizable stack of books. The books were in one place. And the packaging material was in another place. I made a small database to keep things organized. That was in another place. And the place were I took pictures was somewhere else.
So, I decided that ten days before Christmas was absolutely the best time to create a space in the basement to centralize everything. Because that’s what I do.
One of the joys of homeownership is a basement for storage. One of the miseries of homeownership is purging the basement of all the crap that piles up.
Our basement came with a wine cellar. Not a real wine cellar that you see in those fancy homes on HGTV. This was a closet in an unfinished basement. When we first moved in, we thought we totally cool because we had a wine cellar, even if it was more Silence of the Lambs than Napa Valley. We would go to the supermarket and carry down our two bottles of $10 wine and put them in on the rack. Thirty minutes later, we would march down to the wine cellar, get those two bottles, and then drink them. It took us about two weeks to realize that we weren’t really wine cellar types of people, and the wine cellar became the place where we dumped old computers.
Last week, I ripped out the wine cellar/computer graveyard. I pulled down one wall to let in more light and air. This morning, I painted it with some nice moisture resistant basement paint. All it needs is some IKEA bookcases, and I’ll have a proper small business that I only sporadically attend to.
I’ve been busy planning out how to scale up my five books per month business into a sprawling empire. Because that’s what I do. I follow a guy on Instagram who has a small business selling preppy bracelets. I love his warehouse. I want one, too.
All this is to say that I’ll be back to blogging this afternoon, after I take a kid to the doctor’s for a check up.
Apt. 11d 
Funny!
One of my cousins finished a basement as part of her dissertation procrastination. (She did finish eventually, thank goodness.)
Our new house (well, we’ve had it 1.5 years) has an attic. I am trying to scrupulously avoid putting anything in there, although I may eventually crack and stick building materials there (spare tiles, etc). I feel like when you put things into the attic in a large house, 95% of the time, it’s a confession that it’s stuff that you shouldn’t be holding onto.
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We’ve been living in our house for 11 years now. We also had an attic (also a basement and a garage, but the basement is living space). The garage was filled with things when we first moved her (one of the places that the movers moved stuff). But, I’d kept the attic free, too, for a number of years. Then, I discovered the space, and said, hey, we could store winter clothes, and hawaii clothes, and suitcases up here (oh, and the clothes that we’re planning on giving away). It’s completely cluttered now.
So, yes, I agree that getting things out of the house, rather than to the garage, basement, or attic is a very good idea.
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“Then, I discovered the space, and said, hey, we could store winter clothes, and hawaii clothes, and suitcases up here”
Nooooooooo!
Related: If you have a normal amount of storage space, don’t buy those huge plastic storage tubs and just plunk them here and there to store stuff. Over Thanksgiving, I was at a semi-hoarder relative’s home and while she’s better than she used to be thanks to some adult kid threats and hiring a housecleaner, I discovered that she now has one of those large plastic storage tubs as a permanent fixture in the middle of her kitchen floor. You see, when you have between 20 and 30 old boxes of breakfast cereal in your empty nester home, there just isn’t room for the new cereal (???) you just brought home from the grocery store. Oh, and let’s not even talk about the tea collection.
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