Finishing The Basement Sounded Like A Good Idea ...

For the eight years that we've lived in our house, it has always been our intention to take the poured concrete walls and floor of our basement and cover them with drywall, paint, and carpet. You know, making the basement less dreary and all homey and stuff.

A lovely idea, right? Yeah, I thought so, too.

Finishing the basement sounded like a good idea until I realized that we have to deal with all the stuff that has accumulated down there since we moved in. Eight years of assorted crap.

Like a three foot tall, light up, animatronic flamingo named Farrah. Yep. She's mine. And I named her Farrah.

And a sunglasses wearing cactus. Who sings. And dances.

And all the stuff you don't quite know what to do with so you open the basement door and whoosh! Send it flying down the stairs to be dealt with later.

Well hons, Saturday was officially 'later' at my house. We cleaned out part of the basement.

I might never recover from the ordeal.

Look. I have photos.

Ironically, those two big tables were brought downstairs to have a nice, large, and clean surface on which to wrap gifts. Instead of wrapping gifts, the family went 'Woo hoo! A place to park our beloved stuff!'

Sad, but true.

Our basement boasts a couch, a love seat, a futon, and a small recliner. I'm not sure why we had places to sit in the basement … perhaps to sit and watch someone else wrap gifts? Somewhere to sit and survey the mountain range of junk? Watch me run on the treadmill, belting out 80s tunes at top volume? I really have no idea, but it's good to know that we have adequate seating for … something.

Shortly after tossing down a couch, love seat (not pictured), and a futon they, too, were covered with stuff, including a lovely collection of empty wrapping paper tubes that I still think could have been used to make something cool.

Like light sabers for the whole family.

Speaking of making something cool for the whole family, some of my crafty stuff is still down in the basement. I'm deep into the process of moving it into my Room O' Funk. I take credit for all the stuff in this section of the basement.

Who else but me would have a jar of flamingo poop sitting right next to a commemorative Elvis lunchbox? Both were gifts, by the way. And they will be making their way up to my Room O' Funk as soon as I get some shelves up. Oh yes. Fine art like flamingo poop and a commemorative Elvis lunchbox belong in a prominent display, not in a basement.

Oh yeah. The treadmill in which I get my ripped and totally buff bod from is in this corner as well. Normally she's not locked and in her fully upright position. That would make for a tricky run, wouldn't it? Now she's just waiting to be moved to a different corner of the basement.

I thought about setting up my video camera to catch all of the basement cleaning activity. I loved the idea of speeding up the video to have the four hours it took us be about a forty-five second video so you all could enjoy my family buzzing around the basement moving stuff.

No one else in my family shared my enthusiasm for a video. Good thing, too. A video would have shown me digging more than one wedgie and accidentally whacking my kid with an empty wrapping paper tube.

Yes, I was pretending the tube was a light saber, complete with sound effects.

Instead of a lovely video on high speed of us cleaning the basement, you'll have to settle for some photos of the basement going from cluttered to naked.

Behold. A naked basement.

Now that the basement is cleared out, I'm on the next stage of this project. It's sure to be the longest phase: picking a paint color. Sigh. I'd better make up with Curtis the paint dude.

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