OK, bad pun, I know.

The stairs down to the basement are completely and utterly cluttered with junk. Yes, it’s where the recycling goes, and yes, those quick to reach tools live on these shelves as well– but this space is also home to the untouched and unused–the forgotten and obsolete. In other words: it’s all a bunch of crap.

And it’s been that way for years.

So today, I decided to clear out as much of the stuff as I could. Amongst the hidden “treasures” I found: several bird feeders, a couple still in their boxes; dried-up air-dry clay; replacement wings for a robotic dragonfly that was discarded at least five years ago; lots of bungee cords; the smallest “Aspen Collar” ever made; several Christmas gift kitchen gadgets (yes, some still in their boxes); and so on.

I admit that some of the de-clutter was a bit of a shuffle–the pots of paint and glue and tools and fasteners, etc, made their way to the back corner of the basement, which is, well, in its own native state of disorder….

But I did pack up two bags of charity give away, plus another full bag of trash (not to mention what made it into recycling.)

The finished result was pretty startling–we went from shelves with junk stashed everywhere to having lots of free storage space! I will probably end up moving some of the low rotation kitchen accessories onto these shelves (the slow cooker, the ice cream maker, etc.) but for now, I think I will simply enjoy the bare shelves for the next few days!