Out of Chaos Comes Order

Almost 20 days have passed since my last blog, and we continue to move forward getting our house back to a semblance of organization.  Since I last posted, we cleaned out the basement, held a rummage sale, cleaned out the workroom, and made several charitable contributions.  Oh, yes, we also made a sizable contribution to the city dump!

Stephanie had given us an entire truckload of items that she did not want to move into her new house, so those items have been residing in our garage since early June.  I finally cleaned out our basement and added my own pile of items that were headed for a rummage sale.

A pile of unwanted items awaits its trip to the garage for
the rummage sale.

We were blessed with two beautiful summer days for the sale this past Friday and Saturday, but I must admit that I had the worst sale I have every held.  I do not know if the construction in the neighborhood scared people away, or if holding a sale in August is just too late for people.  Perhaps my ad on Craig's List was just not appealing.  At any rate, I never had a crowd the entire two days... just a slow trickle of people coming to browse and occasionally to buy. In the end, I was happy that I made the money that I did for items that I no longer wanted, but I am not sure that it was worth the two days of organizing the sale and marking the items, and then the two days of the actual sale itself.  To add to the misery, both Rick and I are down with summer colds, so neither of us has been a ball of energy.  Stephanie made a little money that she can use to decorate her new house, so I guess that was worth the effort.

For the last two days, Rick and I have concentrated on the one room we did not sort through before the sale: his workroom.  As he started to pull things off the shelves and to sort through 25 years of accumulations, the room seemed to get worse!  (I attach the following picture to prove it!)

We had so much in the workroom that even Rick
did not know what some of the items were.

However, as the hours passed by, we started to make some progress.  As the pictures show, out of chaos can come order.

Just getting the cobwebs off the wall and the
dirt and sawdust off the floors helped to make
the room habitable again.

Naturally, that order resulted in one truckload of goods to the Habitat for Humanity Resale Store and the afore-mentioned load to the city dump.  We still have to take a final load to the city hazardous waste facility, but that has to wait for their drop-off day on Thursday.

Look!  A floor and room in which to work!

Bins and tool chests and labeled storage boxes
add to the organization.

Highlights of the newly organized workroom: Rick took down all of the fluorescent "shop light" fixtures and replaced them with between-the-rafters cans.  Now the lights are more evenly distributed and we no longer have to worry about fluorescent tubes disposals (after Thursday!) Another highlight is that I took a box, some file folders, and the massive pile of sandpaper and organized it into an easily searchable system.

Even the sandpaper is easily accessible now.

This room was a lot of work, and we still have some "fine tune" organization to do in the tool chest and in some of the storage bins, but overall the improvement is incredible.

We both are tired, but we both feel so good looking at a basement that is now clean, organized, and actually inviting to use.  We have neglected this northern home for the past few years, so I find our efforts rewarding as we get it back into order.