Before and After Pictures of My Decluttered Basement

**MsMarieH** · 02-18-2011, 08:15 AM

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.

**Dancing Lotus** · 02-18-2011, 09:43 AM

I wish I had a dungeon to tackle. GREAT JOB

**nuisance26** · 02-18-2011, 09:45 AM

~Inspiring! WTG!!!~

**HappyMama** · 02-18-2011, 09:56 AM

That is inspiring, great job. Everything looks so organized now.

**RABBIT** · 02-18-2011, 10:02 AM

Great job!! I like that you mentioned that you didn't get rid of very much, most people think you have to give away everything to have to nice tidy space but you proved that wrong. I love how organized it looks.