The Neon Nurse's Charting

Try not to be frightened....

As you may recall, we have been working on trying to get several years worth of accumulated goods sorted and out the door, either by selling it, consigning it to be sold elsewhere, giving it away, storing it in the sheds we BOUGHT for that whole REASON for cryin' out loud...and even taking it to the dump when all else fails.

There's actually a good reason we have been living in little caves and tunnels made out of bins of books and stuff. (And it's not insanity. No, really, we aren't classic hoarders, because we are FINE with getting rid of stuff.)

See, a few years back there was a change in the water law in our area, and the end result was that farmers up and down the Arkansas Valley had to cap off many of their irrigation wells and let the water run downstream to those whiny babies in Kansas. (Not that we are bitter.) This caused the area water tables to rise a good ten feet. And those of us who live kind of near the Arkansas River and have bsements? Why, WE got some extra water too!

So our basement is kind of a giant mold pit. We threw out all the wet stuff when it flooded. All three times. And now we have a sump pump to prevent it happening again. But until we have the wherewithal for some major rennovations, all the basement is good for is storing stuff, providing the stuff is well wrapped in plastic or sealed in bins.

Hence our Basement of Doom, which is pretty much full. Lots of that junk could go, but IT needs sorting too, and there are only so many hours in a day, y'know? But because the B of D is full, the overflow was getting stacked in the upstairs part of the house.

We decided this spring break would be a great time for an all-out assault, instead of the slow picking away at one box at a time. Yesterday was Day One. I moved a bunch of things (*cough* to a different but easier to disassemble Big Stack) yesterday...so the following picture is not strictly a Before. I think it does look a little worse than it did before we started, because it's looser, no longer neatly stacked with a cloth over it:



I am posting this in large part so that I will feel honor bound to FINISH the project, what with all of you KNOWING ABOUT IT and expecting to see something remarkable by way of results in a week or so.

Meanwhile, a fun game! Like in those kids magazines from my youth. Can you spot these items?

Japanese fishing float, stuffed (toy) shark, mounted sailfish, vintage dentist's exam light, vase of peacock feathers, treadmill, lamp made of acrylic grapes, china cabinet, floor.