Confessions about My Clutter

I have clutter. While I wish I didn't, I do. 

Each and every time I drive the Ford F-150 into our garage, I confront the clutter. There's the workbench that I built in 1994 and all it is is a place to put clutter. Right now, it has our patio table on it, upside down with a blanket on it. The front of the garage also has the gigantic picnic table from Balltown that I haven't assembled for years. Then there's a white plastic shelf that is very old and very ugly. Next to that shelf is our deep freezer, which is next to a table we have had for decades on which there is a 3 shelf plastic drawer organizer. Next to that is the aforementioned workbench, and next to that is the fridge that used to be inside the house but that we moved to the garage when we swapped the fridge that was in the garage into the house because the ice maker in that fridge stopped working. However, when Calvin, our plumber, hooked up the water to that fridge, there was an issue and so, now, we don't have a fridge with a working ice maker.

Then, if you go inside our house and make your way to the basement, there's more clutter. I have tried to make the basement less cluttered but even after I spent the weekend of April 1 - 2 re-organizing both our storage room with our sump pump and our storage room with our furnace - yes, we have two storage rooms in our basement - I freely admit that I couldn't find the magical way to create more room for our stuff in those two storage rooms. While I was working on the storage rooms reorganization project, I noticed that roughly 33% of the stuff in the furnace room doesn't belong to Karen & I. Who owns it? Our kids! They have so much stuff, even though Karen and I are living in an empty nest.

I'll also confess my selfish intention and goal for the work I decided to perform. I wanted to figure out a better way to store my two acoustic drum sets - both the Ludwig Vistalite set that I've owned since 1984 and the Sonar set that I've owned for less than a year. I used to store the Ludwig Vistalite set under my basement steps. However, I took that set out from under the steps and put other stuff under the steps - trading places if you will. I had a vision of tuning the Ludwig Vistalite set and to then use it at a Bad Rumor gig. However, that hasn't happened yet. 

I digress. On the weekend of April 1 - 2, I took almost every thing out of both storage rooms. I moved one of the 4' shelves from the furnace storage room and into the sump pump storage room. I also moved our light blue Easter storage bins from the furnace storage room into the sump pump storage room. Also, I finally built the 5 shelf from Lowes. I purchased that shelving unit back in May 2022. I had not put it together while I tried for months to design the best way to use it. Instead of building it as a single 5 shelf unit, I built it as a 3 shelf unit and a 2 shelf unit. The 3 shelf unit is in the sump pump storage room and the 2 shelf unit is in the furnace storage room. Additionally, I moved our microwave cart and our white clothes rolling rack from the sump pump storage room to the furnace room. 

I freely admit that I will reorganize the two storage rooms in the future. Until then, I will continue reading articles - like this one -https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-top-5-sources-of-household-clutter-and-how-to-put-an-end-to-each-headache?utm_source=pocket-newtab - The Top 5 Sources of Household Clutter—And How to Put an End to Each Headache - in the hope that I have a revelation about how to use the storage rooms in the best possible way. Some friends I know don't have any storage in their house - I have two storage rooms. I need to figure out the best way to take advantage of that fact.