I’ve been living in my home on wheels for about a year now. My basement is stuffed full of “stuff”. You know… those things that you think you can’t live without but rarely, if ever, actually use or even look at??
Ya, stuff.
So, after a year of most of it sitting down there unused, I decided it was time to “clean basement”!
Yay!
For those that don’t remember, I wrote this post back in June of 2014. I talk about the value I have found in de-cluttering my life. This little project was just a continuation of that effort.
I pulled every single storage bin out of the basement and then nearly lost my motivation looking at the huge pile!
However; I persevered and got to work.
I went thru every container and decided what was worth keeping and what could go. Of course, this wasn’t the first time for this little project. I did it numerous times whilst attempting to sell my last home and before moving into my motorhome, I REALLY had to make an effort to par my junk stash down to a very minimal level. So, it wasn’t like I had tons of junk.
No…. Wait… That is exactly what I had!!!
Well, ok… Not tons of junk like you see on some of those ‘hoarding’ tv shows but certainly tons of junk for a single guy living in a motorhome. Well… maybe not even that. I see some folks living the RV life who appear to have truckloads of trash. I didn’t have that either.
Ok, I had a small pile of valuable items that I wanted to sort thru and see if there was anything that was less valuable than it was a year and that I didn’t care to pay for fuel to haul around for another year.
Phew…
I’ll spare you the details but after an entire afternoon of effort, I was able to eliminate two medium sized storage bins from my basement. The items tossed where old “hobby” type things that I hated to throw away but to which I knew I would never return. That doesn’t sound like much, I know. However; as a percentage of “all stuff in the basement”, it is probably ten percent??? Not sure, that might be optimistic.
Four hot glue guns?? Not any longer.
It’s amazing how stuff keeps showing up after “de-cluttering” or downsizing. I don’t buy a lot since I decided to seriously downsize a couple of years ago. I’m not traveling but I still like to keep things at a minimum. I “de-clutter” every spring it seems … I have no idea where that stuff comes from.
Hi Steve – It is an amazing thing. I’ve always heard that “junk expands to fill available space”. I thought that meant new stuff showed up, now I’m starting to wonder if existing items actually do expand – very slowly so we don’t notice it. 🙂