Before and After Pictures of My Decluttered Basement

**heartofmine** · 02-18-2011, 10:33 PM

Awesome job! Dh and I worked all day yesterday on his work room in the basement. We hauled an entire truck load of stuff off to the center. We are getting ready to build a new home and the more we can clean and get rid of unneeded stuff the less we'll have to move.

**Palooka** · 02-18-2011, 11:22 PM

I would love to have a basement like that. You did a great job and everything looks so neat and organized.

**MsMarieH** · 02-20-2011, 12:17 PM

Thanks everybody!!! And thank you for nominating me for the post of the week. That's exciting for me, being so new here.

I've occasionally thought about doing this as a business, but that would be a long way away.

My next project will be either the garage or the hubby's home office, I think - depending on weather most likely.

**ktsmama** · 02-23-2011, 02:01 PM

I'm impressed!! I know you are glad to have it all done.

**larabelle** · 02-23-2011, 05:03 PM

Great Job!!!

Thanks for sharing...it gives me the motivation to tackle some of my projects.

**Ramona** · 02-23-2011, 05:26 PM

Originally Posted by MsMarieH

Hi everybody!

As I mentioned in my Decluttered Home Office Thread, this year I have made a committment to work on one large project each month. For February that was decluttering and organizing my basement. It wasn't absolutely horrendous. I think it was just the typical basement - a dumping ground for things that had no home and over our 10 years of living here, plenty of things got dumped down there.

I committed to spending an hour a day down there and it took a total of about 20 hours. Once I started, it went pretty quickly. Took me roughly two weeks to complete. I still need to do a smidge more on my craft area, but otherwise, it's done.

I actually didn't really get rid of very much. I took out about 2 large garbage bags and I took 4 boxes to goodwill and an old tv to the electronics recycling fair. Mostly this project was about organizing better what I had.

I lucked out in that my neighbor down the street redid his garage this summer and threw out a bunch of shelving units. I was able to grab 3 5-shelf units, 2 3-shelf units and 1 2-shelf unit.

My basement is basically u-shaped with the stairs coming down the middle and then taking a sharp right at the bottom and the hot water heater/furnace beneath the stairs.

Here's the tour, starting in one corner:

Turn to the right 90 degrees:

This is the view when you are facing those shelves on the left:

And finally, the back corner (turned around 180 degrees from the last pictures):

I hope this inspires some of you to tackle your big dungeons!!! You'll be so happy when you see progress.

*thunk* I just fell off my chair

That is one fantastic, mindboggling declutter.

**MsMarieH** · 02-23-2011, 05:44 PM

Thanks everyone!

It was so funny... Last night I walked downstairs to grab a few jars of home canned stuff to use for dinner and I literally had a momentary thought of "What the hell??? the basement's clean..." and then after a pause... "oh yeah, I did it... Dang it looks good down here.

" LOL ROFL I'm not quite used to it yet, but I'm sure loving it!!!

I also LOVED that I was able to walk right to the shelf and pull off exactly the jars that I needed. I didn't have to dig through boxes and bags wondering how much stock I had left of any particular thing and where on earth it had ended up. It was right where it was supposed to be!!!