The basement in our home is actually a busy place for our family. It's where we do our homeschooling and where I write. It's where the toys are kept and it's where I dig through the dozens of unopened boxes remaining from our move.
Unfortunately, it's a mess.
This is our homeschooling room and my office. And it's got not one, but three, desks piled high with bills, papers, and other miscellaneous stuff. I need a professional organizer (or maybe just a babysitter) to come and help me or I'll never get this sorted out. My life can be summarized in this room: chaos.
See? This side of the rooms houses my sewing machine (buried) and some of the inventory for my store. There are boxes of files from former doula clients, books, and bins of receipts.
At least we have an organized area for our homeschooling supplies and books. My mom gave us these cabinets when she remodeled her house a few months ago. It's the perfect spot for my sewing fabrics (on the shelves behind the glass doors) and all of our board games too (in the bottom cabinets.) This is also where Matthew and Joshua store their tiny toys (Legos) that can't be out around the babies. The entire right cabinet is full of homeschooling books, papers, files, art supplies, and other fun things. I love these cabinets!
Here's another view, looking in from the door. That's my desk in the corner, buried under bills and mail. The guest bed actually has 6 drawers under it where we can store things so I love that. The coffee table is where the boys sit to do school work since it's at just the right level. Almost everything in this room was from IKEA and half of it came from my mom. This means it was cheap. I love that.The strange storage cube contraption sticking out from under the coffee table is the home of our guinea pig, Linny. He likes to run in circles and he's quite the entertainer.
We have a full bathroom downstairs but it's never been used since we moved here. In fact, it's never been cleaned either. I'm working on that. But it's tough to keep the 3 upstairs bathrooms presentable, let alone find time to venture into the dungeon bathroom.
This is the view from the bottom of the stairs. That's the bathroom door and the playroom and office are to the right.
Looking up the stairs, you can see that Leila is very upset. That's pretty typical these days. Moving on...
Another view of the basement hallway shows that there are still boxes piled up everywhere. Conveniently, I did not photograph the extra room to the left. It's unfinished and it's become the home to the mountain of boxes that will likely never get unpacked before we move to Washington next January.
The playroom has started it's transformation to organization. We added a few IKEA storage bins and I have chalkboard paint that is going up on this wall. Those odd steps that are stacked on each other are actually a part to an IKEA slide but they were selling them for $3.99 because the slide was broken. It's a smooth piece of solid wood so I bought two of them for the kids to climb on and under. They love them! It's just proof that kids can be entertained with just about anything.
Here's our toy storage. I printed photos of what goes into each bin and taped them to the front of each bin. This makes it easy for the kids to quickly see what belongs in each bin and sort the toys accordingly. Don't get me wrong, they still make a huge mess, but it's a bit easier to clean up when it's organized.
Here's view of the playroom from my office. The stairs are to the right and there are doors going to the backyard in the left corner of the room. In the back right corner is our playstand which needs a bit of repair, and the girls' toy box full of dolls. It's not so overwhelming when everything is put away!So that's it. That's the house as it is now. Jason and I hope to continue to work on the house and eventually move back here after he finishes his time in Washington. He's considering getting out of the Army but that's still 3 years away, an by then he'll be halfway to retirement... so who knows what will happen. For now, we're just praying that someday we get to live in this house as a family!
