Ladybug Farms: I Can See The Floor!!!!

Project Complete

When we walked through our house to see if we wanted to buy it, the storage room was one of the biggest selling points. All that storage space. All those shelving units. The previous owners had it completely organized into blue tubs, all perfectly labeled. It was beautiful.

Until we moved in. The boxes that I didn't want to deal with came off the moving van and went directly onto the shelves. Over the years we've added extensively to the collection. I managed to keep it fairly clean in there until our sump pump failed and our basement flooded four years ago. We had to move everything from the other half of the basement (our office and rec room) into the storage room while the carpet was dried out. Our storage room never recovered.

Somewhere around 4 hours into the project

My mom came over about a year ago to help me dig out my basement. We spent an afternoon and hauled out a van load of stuff for Goodwill. I worked a little bit more on it after that, but then got overwhelmed by the project and quit.

So I guess one could look at the ebook that I reviewed, 21 Day to a More Disciplined Life by Crystal Paine, as a turning point. My basement was the only really big project I could think of that would take me three weeks to finish. I set down my Kindle after reading the first few days and deciding I was going to tackle my basement once and for all, and got to work.

I intended to only spend thirty minutes every day on the task until it was completed, but my basement has a way of sucking me in. Just one more box, just one more shelf. I'd be working along and realize I'd been in there for over an hour or longer.

After finishing up my work on Wednesday, I figured I had another 10 hours of work ahead of me. Thursday, I started carrying the trash out to put on the curb for trash day today. Then I had to carry out the purges to drop off at Goodwill. And break down the pile of boxes to throw away. And then I had to finish going through the boxes. And then I just had the middle of the floor to finish, so I worked on that for a while.

I may have to tip my garbage man for this one

Suddenly, I looked around me and realized I was almost completely done. All I had to do was take care of the last of the trash and giveaways, move a few pieces of furniture, and then sweep the floor.

My big project, that I thought for sure would take me three weeks to complete, that I have put off and put off for YEARS because just the thought of it overwhelmed me, is now done. And it only took me six days and about ten hours of work total. How's that for doing something new this week?!

Loaded up and ready for Goodwill

David came to check it out and asked, "Mom, where did everything go?" Honestly, I have no idea. I hauled out a bunch of empty boxes, three garbage bags of trash, and two boxes of giveaways. But that doesn't seem like nearly enough to explain where all that junk went. I have over an entire shelving unit's worth of empty space with only empty boxes sitting on the shelves for future use.

The kids got out their scooters to try out the new space

All I can say is Thank You, Crystal, for allowing me to review your ebook and motivating me to finally accomplish this project. It feels really, really good to finally have a clean basement.