One bad thing about wanting to save the earth and reuse things, is when you have a basement to store all those well intended, potential projects, party paraphernalia and grand ideas. For years I’ve been saying I need to simplify these good intentions and take control of the stuff – creating a secondary storage space for the kitchen supplies that don’t fit in my current, circa 1952 kitchen.
This is where my spring cleaning attention has been directed, as I plan for major renovations happening at our house over the next several months. Joining Project: Simplify over at Simple Mom has given me some direction and focus of what areas to tackle when.
This was week two, and the hot spot was kitchen and/or pantry. I created a little wiggle room for myself and chose the area of my basement that houses kitchen and entertaining items that are not used on a daily basis.
In order to truly create this “pantry” space I had to wade through boxes and boxes of photos and mementos – from wedding, to travel, to high school, to my cheerleading uniforms dating back to the eighth grade. I also had boxes and boxes of magazines and newspapers clippings from my journalism days in Atlanta.
All of that, and more, is seen in my before picture. Some of it got sorted through and some of it got pushed aside, to be addressed during the fourth and last hot spot, during the week of March 26 – eliminating the ping-pong table that sits under all that stuff!
YIKES!
So, without any more explaining the hoarding scene in my basement – I show you my newly unearthed and organized basement pantry area that holds my entertainment supplies, canning supplies, a place to now grind wheat, my collection of coffee cups and coffee pots (odd I know) plus some more this and that as we plan for our new kitchen upstairs.
Both wooden cabinets you see below were part of the original cabinets in our 90-year-old house and lived on the other end of the before photo, which is not seen. But you can tell below where the brick wall is yellow, that it hadn’t been moved in about 50 years. The wheat grinding table is an antique from my husband’s Great Uncle Irby’s farmhouse. The black stand was previously used to house recycling before our city went to single stream bins, and the other metal stand was a curbside find on the driveway to one of our neighbor’s house.
Like week one of our simplified kids art space and basement toy area, this is truly a reuse project and nothing fancy. But it’s a testament to the fact that it works, floors to ceiling were scrubbed cleaned and it’s no longer cluttered! Hallelujah to that!
Next week’s hot spot is closets, countertops and drawers. I’ll be working in my own closet(s) to rid all those clothes I haven’t worn since my pre-baby days and get ready for spring.
