Getting rid of stuff! - How we did the unthinkable

We have a lot of STUFF. I bet some of you can relate to that. When we moved in two years ago we piled up all our boxes in the basement and forgot about them. Since then we have only been adding to the pile and not sorting through anything. It got to the point where we couldn't even walk into our basement, never mind find something we were looking for. Here is the poor state of our basement.

As a basement clean up is not fun, we needed some inspiration to get started and a solid deadline by which to finish. We scheduled a family gathering for Easter, that includes Easter egg painting in the basement. This way we knew the basement had to be cleaned on time. We also made a plan to get rid of anything we hadn't used in the past year. We tried to keep to the " if we don't use it we lose it" idea. 

We started out slow and steady and as the boxes got emptied a little pathway appeared. Seeing the path we knew we were making progress.

 We opened up boxes, revisited memories and made decisions about what to keep and what to let go.

Some of it felt good to let go; some of it was a challenge. Things reminding us of family traditions were a tough decision.

Cinnamon kept a close eye on our progress.

We spent about 8 hours sorting, moving boxes, arguing what to keep or not to keep, laughing and rescuing the kittens from falling off things. Doing it while there was snow on the ground made us feel better; we weren't missing out on sunny garden days.

After a few weekends working on this project, we finally finished.  The basement got emptied, swept...

...and we reduced the number of our boxes to about one third. Yay!

It felt good getting rid of stuff. It makes you feel lighter. It also makes our small house more livable and feel more spatious. We will be holding a garage sale in the spring to sell some of the stuff and donate the rest.  If you need some inspiration to get started, here again is the before and after:

BEFORE the clean-up

AFTER the clean-up

Have a good "getting rid of stuff" day!

Mia

Mould in the basement

When we bought our house, one thing that we worried about was our basement. We were aware that it did have some moisture issues as we found surface mould in the cold room.

Cold room with mould

The first thing we did when we moved in was to identify where the moisture was coming from. We discovered that the cold room is situated right below a wooden planter box beside the front porch. This planter used to get filled up with water, as the downspout ended in the planter. Water had been collecting there for years and working its way down into the cold room.

Misha figured out a great way to fix this. He bought a $15 drainpipe extension and installed it on the downspout. Immediately, the planter became drier, the cold room became drier and the moisture issue was solved. It was an easy, cheap and really effective solution. 

The solution

We then removed all the panelling and washed the concrete walls with an environmentally-friendly mould remover. For now, the basement is dry. We will consider re-sealing the basement walls from outside and replacing the weepers when we get to the basement reno, planned for 2013. 

By Mia.

Window Well Done!

Oh, window wells. How much more exciting can a project get? This is another “it has to get done but so don’t want to do” project. Surprisingly, Misha was quiet excited about getting started on it. The advantage of a window well is that we can maintain the soil grade slope away from the house. This is very important to keep the water draining away from the house and maintaining a dry basement. The well would also prevent rot around the window as we still have wood frames around our basement windows. It took us about couple hours to finish off the project and now the front of the house is ready for some native woodland landscaping. Misha did a great job on this one! Posted by Mia

Before - basement window

During - Prepping for the window well

Window well in place - the proud handyman!