Organizational Challenge "BEFORE" Pictures

As I mentioned in my previous post, I am taking on a 30 day Organizational Challenge! Yesterday was officially Day 1 and today is Day 2 which makes it really a 28 day challenge for me!

I did go to Walmart today and I was looking at containers and such and then I realized that while I have an idea of what I need containers for, I'm not sure how big of a container I need for each category, so I think I really just need to start working on everything and go from there.

I am going to work on my basement, mostly because, as previously stated, I think that by organizing the basement, I will then be able to organize other rooms of my house a little better.

Here are a couple "before" pictures of the basement. I took some pictures of the other spaces that I think will improve with the basement being cleared out but I'll start with these for now.

This is the "family room" of my basement.

Most of what you see there are yardsale items and Christmas decorations & wrapping paper as well as a couple other things. MOST of that can go. We had a yardsale last year, but not everything left. I gave some things to friends, but there still is tons more.

The Laundry / Storage room.

The little shelf thing there was already in when we moved here. I added the cabinet. Right now it mostly houses some shipping boxes and holiday stuff (like Easter baskets) and Ribbons and Bows for gifts.

This is another view of the laundry room. This is actually a good storage space, and I've got a few things in there, but again, not really organized space. I am debating about taking the doors off as they are not really doors, just some wood panels that someone stapled or nailed to pieces of wood and made a door out of them. There is a hole in one of them too, which is another reason why I want to get rid of the doors, but I like the fact they keep out dust, sort of.

This was an attempt at organization. I bought one of these wardrobe things to put our winter coats in during the summer and vice versa. However, for some idiotic reason, there is no bottom on it. And to make matters worse, when we were putting it together, the wheel snapped and so it doesn't even fit together properly.



This is behind that wardrobe thingy. These "shelves" were there when we moved in this house but they are not shelves at all! They are brackets from shelves but just broken pieces of wood that someone put up there at one time or another.

Now, in this space when we moved here was a big old ugly freezer that doesn't work at all and an ugly old stove that the previous owners claimed was used when a boarder lived in the basement. We moved the freezer to put our own freezer in this space. Lugged that thing all the way into the other room only to find out there's no plug in behind here! So it was just taking up space and not being used at all. We were able to get someone to move the stove and the fridge but we still have the freezer in the other side of the room. One of my plans for this challenge is to see if I can get someone to haul away the freezer and some other junk left behind by the previous owners (like a broken mirror) and some of our own junk



Here is under the stairs to the basement. At one time there was a fridge there. We thought we would use it as extra space when we had company coming, even though it was old. Well we turned it on only to find that it was completely mouldy inside. Yuck! Later we thought to put our freezer here. While it basically fits here, the cord could not reach the plug in. (We have alot of plug in issues in this house)


and so that's my basement, folks. I am extremely embarrassed at it's condition, but hopefully after this challenge it will be a little tidier and a little more organized... even if I don't win the prizes!