Basement Treasures

Nesting is in full swing - I'm about to drive Benny crazy. He can hardly sit for a second without me bugging him about some project that needs to be done RIGHT now. Despite all this, our house is an extreme disaster and I'm feeling like I want to lie on my back, kick my feet like a turtle who fell over, and hope that someone comes to my rescue to clean it .. any takers?

We made organizing the basement storage room a top priority (when really it should have been the zillionth thing on our to-do list). But, since spring clean-up is next week, I wanted to make sure all the trash made it to the curb. Let me tell you, this room was bad. I get that it's a "storage room" so it's meant for boxes upon boxes to be thrown in there ... but when my dad moved up here, he brought a semi-load of everything I had ever owned in addition to my mom's stuff and some of my brothers. It all ended up in the same unorganized fashion in the storage room. And.. enough was enough.

We started by putting tubs in rows in the main room in the basement. I bought some tape, bubble wrap, and paper for labeling. Then we took the boxes out one-by-one and went through them. I quickly started a trash pile and also began disposing of boxes that didn't meet my standards (please remember Benny and I have much different ideas about what is "trash").

We finished last night (okay, this is partially a lie -- we still have some "final touches" to go) but at least the storage room part is organized. In the process we found A LOT of trash, but also A LOT of treasures. We had quite the jolly old time going through some of my childhood memories -- I used to dream of being an author and we found box upon box of random notebook paper I had written poems or stories on. We found yearbooks, awards, pictures, childhood momentos, items from our wedding, and the list goes on & on & on.

Here were the top finds of the evening (and the majority are written things which goes to show -- you really should save these things!):

1. A card from Lauren. It was still in the envelope, and as soon as I saw the handwriting on the front I teared up. The return address said, "Guess! :)" and I laughed because I knew.. and also because she actually sent it in the mail that way. It was a card she sent me after the summer we became inseparable and of course she used up every inch of white space. It finished with "Just remember: I wuv you & you're the greatest! :)" Definitely needed that reminder. But the best part of all was that I just now turned the card over and there is a purple smear on the back and then in pencil she wrote, "Gel markers don't work on here" with an arrow to the smear .. and this is why my life is incomplete without her.

2. Notebooks FULL of doodles about some boy I apparently used to have a crush on .. "I love Benny" .. "I love Benny Edwards" .. "Grace Loves Nick" .. "Nick + Grace = Love Forever" Benny rolled his eyes and told me that if he had seen that years ago, he probably would have run away.

3. A journal I had written about Benny leaving for college. After reading most of my writings we found which were beyond horrible, this was actually pretty legit. It brought back a flood of emotions about how truly heartbroken I was when he went off to college -- he was my best friend & I remember feeling like my world had just ended. He didn't really see why I was crying about it now since we ended up together, but it was a tramatizing time .. and I'm pregnant .. so there.

4. Girls, Inc. memorbilia -- from newspaper articles to pictures of our rockstar dance team! Working at Girls, Inc. was one of the best experiences of my life .. and I'm not sure who impacted me more - the girls or the ladies I worked with. I am incredibly fortunate to have met these wonderful ladies who are very strong women and always inspire me to be a better person.

5. A Morningside lunch tray compliments of Chelsea Swanson. That was the "thing" -- take a lunch tray and go sledding down the hill. I'll never forget how we walked out of the cafeteria and everyone had theirs except for me (Yes, I've always been a little scaredy cat with way too high of morals to do anything fun). I was kind of sulking over my lack of adventure when Chelsea pulled two out from under her coat and said, "I got you covered. I knew you'd chicken out."

6. A newspaper with Benny and Kaitlin on the front page -- just crowned homecoming queen and; king. I remember thinking it was so cool that Jake was dating Kaitlin at the time and I was dating Benny and now we're both married .. we're just quite the royal family!

7. Pointe shoes, dance trophies, costumes, and videos -- Dance was such a huge part of my life and all these things brought on a flood of memories of competitions, buns, hairspray, bleeding toes, way too much make-up, and all the wonderful girls I danced with.

I said to Benny several times that I don't know why I kept half the stuff I did, but he kept reminding me of how much fun we had going through it and how even if it did take up a little space in the storage room, years down the road we'd go through it again and it would mean even more. Good point - thanks for supporting my efforts to be on Hoarders, dear. ;)

Almost done ..Just have a few more things to put in tubs.

We went from about 80 random boxes/tubs to 20!