Basement cleaning

We live in a ranch and Sarah and my bedroom is in the basement. The "garage' section is open to the rest of the basement and currently serves as our project room and workshop. Given how many projects we have going, it is common to not clean up one before beginning the other. With this situation, the walkways constantly get narrower. There comes a point where I feel so anxious and claustrophobic causing a compulsion to clean. We hit that point a few days ago. For the soon-to-be-mentioned reason, I could not just straighten up; we needed real cleaning.

In a moment of desperation I had dumped hot ashes in the driveway to melt some ice and offer some traction. This led the rest of our crew to believe I wanted all ashes dumped in the driveway. Our three kids and our three dogs and Sarah and I have tracked most of that ash back into the house on our shoes. It would then dry and turn to dust blanketing everything in fine ash dust. We also had returned to disorganized chaos with stuff. Tools, winter clothing, gloves and hats, scrap wood and metal, cloths that no longer fit, etc. Every surface covered. Both basement table and the workbench were pretty well useless. Just a pile of stuff.

The state of the floor was bothering me. We had to wash the ash off the floor so I had ordered a commercial service mop and squeeze bucket. Once the supplies had arrived, I began clearing the floor. We had items stored under everything and all kinds of stuff on the floor. I started at the front door and began picking things up and finding better homes for them. Off the floor, onto the table, and cleaned off. I began to choose shelved items that are not weather/temperature sensitive to move out to the sheds. I then had room on the shelves for the sensitive items that were on the floor. All the buckets of screws, hardware from completed projects, two boxes of plumbing supplies, and scraps of dimensional lumber all went out to the sheds.

Initially I was going to clean and mop one section at a time. I did not want to keep emptying and refilling the bucket, so I got all the floor cleaned, one section at a time. Eventually I rounded the corner into the bedroom. More clutter and mess. Boxes of old electronics and radios were moved to the garage and all the necessary items were organized and tidied.

I then mopped everything twice until all the dirt was up and went out to do chores while it dried.

Now I had the cleaning bug and figured I should keep going. Ammo cans organized and back on the shelves, bags of old clothing moved into Sarah's truck for her to deal with, and three bags of garbage brought out to the bins. Still, it did not feel complete.

Next I attacked the workbench. All the tools had already been stowed, but cleaning had accumulated three cans of screws and bits. One of my favorite organizational activities is to sort screws. I dumped out one can at a time and sorted all the bits, then the next, and the last. Then I get to bring each sorted pile to its rightful storage bin. Now the workbench looked great, but the far corner where the tool boxes are was still not flowing. I pulled everything down and began to organized the contents of cardboard boxes and committed them to the toolboxes while sorting the toolbox contents. Doing so removed 3 boxes and made room for Sarah's apothecary supplies. I still did not feel complete and satisfied.

One side of the front door has our shoe rack and coat rack and oil tank. The other side has a utility shelf in the corner with all our spray cans and spray bottles...the chemical corner. There were half empty bottles of resin epoxy to the side of the shelf wedged in between the workbench and shelf, fallen spray bottles wedged in the corner, and a stack of empty boxes to the ceiling for our knife orders. The bottom shelf is all paint and has not been touched so that was left alone with other found spray paint cans tossed on top. All the chemicals were removed and organized on the workbench. The empty and broken cans were thrown out and everything else was returned to the shelf but organized with the most common items in front of the middle shelves. Then I broke down all the boxes which allowed them to fit nicely next to the shelf.

With that last section done, we now have an organized workshop that is pleasant to look at and a joy to work in.