To start off this week.....

It's raining and snowing today.  I'm happy to be in my warm cozy house, but not happy that I am sick.  Late last night, I started to feel a little scratch in my throat and I had a headache.  This morning I woke up to what felt like a ball stuck in my throat.  Realizing that my tonsils have been removed, I knew this was not a good sign.  It's hard to swallow and I still have a slight headache.  I'm thinking it's just a virus and hoping it's not strep.

We just found out last week that our insurance co-pay's were increased, so now we pay twenty-five dollars instead of ten to see the doctor.  Obviously, it makes me a little less eager to make an appointment.  I'll just go with the "wait and see" approach.  

When I'm sick it's hard for me to just stay in bed.  I have all these things I want to do....like:

Organize this closet.

or

Begin the daunting process of organizing what is supposed to be my craft/sewing room.

This room has been organized once before.  It was almost finished when I decided to destroy the downstairs storage room so that we could actually walk in there. One of my biggest pet peeve's is when you have to take everything out of a room just to get in there.  I just can't stand it.  This is a room I just shut the door on.  I'm really going to need a tremendous amount of energy to tackle this room.  Does anyone want to help?  

Eh..I didn't think so.  

I bet you're wondering just how bad the storage room was to make my previously organized craft room look that way.  

This wasn't even half the trash we hauled out of the basement.  It's absolutely ridiculious that we have accumulated and carried around so much junk in the past 16 years.  We still had manuals from the twin's carseats and at least a garbage bag full of manuals of stuff we have not owned for a decade.  It really felt good to go through all of those boxes though.  

This is what part of the basement looked like after I cleaned out the storage room.  It was a complete mess for over three weeks.  That's how long it took me to go through everything.  Unfortunately I do not have any before pictures of the storage room, but this is most of what was in there.  There are about 6 boxes that are not in this photo.  

During the three weeks the basement was in shambles my youngest son, Caleb (7), had no where else to play LEGO's. Of course, to a seven year old, making a mess among the mess is the perfect spot to build his creations.  

To his credit, he didn't have any other place to play because his own bedroom was in disarray while we took apart the bunkbed's and made two separate beds, but didn't actually finish making them two separate beds for a few weeks.   Procrastination at it's finest.  You see, Rob thought the two beds that were still in bunkbed form (one low with rails and two footboards, one high with two headboards) looked fine. And I, with gnashing of teeth, disagreed until the beds were put together right.  Who in their right mind.......?  Nevermind.

We ended up moving the LEGO's back to the bedroom once the beds were complete because those teeny-tiny pieces, that are extremely expensive pieces of plastic, do not fare well in dark brown deep-pile carpet.  My vacuum loves to gobble them up.  Caleb has keen hearing and can tell the distinct sound of the vacuum devouring his treasured pieces.  I, however, refuse to dig through the bag to recover the lost pieces, so Caleb has now learned he had better pick them up by the time I'm ready to vacuum.  There's nothing more precious than the sound of your child running at the speed of light while screaming "WAIT!  WAIT!  Don't let the vacuum eat my LEGO's!!!"

This is what the finished storage room looks like.  

When you open the door you see this.  There is a shelf with duffle bags and other various bags. Sleeping bags are neatly stacked on the top shelf.  Hard suitcases are neatly stacked in the corner. 

As you can see there is still a walk-way towards the back of the storage room.  The shelf you see with the Life game is actually our game shelf. 

The shelving unit in the far back holds Christmas boxes and other holiday items.  The two craft tree's do not collapse so this is how they will be until next Christmas.  I will put plastic bags over them to keep the dust off.   The second shelving unit has items we might need to get into at some point, but things I didn't want to throw in the trash.  Most of it is sentimental.

It was very motivating to go through the storage room and make it accessible.  

Now I'm off to organize the hall closet and do some laundry.  Or, perhaps, I'll just make myself some tea, wrap up in a warm blanket and read a good book.