Battling the basement

What have we gotten ourselves into? By "we" I mean my wife and me.

We have decided to do battle in the basement. Not with each other. With the clutter.

It's more of a war, really, and we have quickly learned that there will be many skirmishes before we can stand on the freshly swept gray concrete in front of our "Mission accomplished!" banner.

We have a sizable basement. About two-thirds of it is finished: large family room with fireplace, good-sized bedroom and a huge full bath.

The bathroom is used every day. The bedroom is used rarely when someone is visiting, since we also have an upstairs spare bedroom. And the family room is never used, since there is an even larger family room -- with floor-to-ceiling windows -- on the main level.

The other third of the basement is unfinished. That's where we have the heating-air-conditioning system and hot-water heater. The laundry room was there until last year when we remodeled the upstairs bathrooms so one of them could accommodate the washer and dryer. The freezer is down there too.

About half of the unfinished space is what we call storage. Of course, "storage" can be many things. It can be an orderly arrangement of unused or surplus items. It can be a place for family keepsakes.

In our case, "storage" also includes cardboard boxes packed by movers in 1967 when we moved from Kansas City to Dallas, boxes that have never been opened since. We have a vague idea of what's in there. We occasionally come across the glass-and-metal coffee table we proudly purchased in 1977. We still use the matching end tables. We have forgotten why we stopped using the coffee table.

Our basement "storage" also includes all the things my wife thinks are essential to home decorating. That includes door wreathes of every description with adornments for every season. And vases. Dozens of vases. No one likes fresh-cut flowers like my wife, and she's quite particular about the container they go in.

We have a box of toys our sons played with, including a monster collection of Legos. We have the cradle I made at my father-in-law's sheet-metal and plumbing shop when we were visiting from New York a couple of months before our older son was born. Younger son slept there, too.

There are two large boxes labeled "Family photos." Those would chronicle the early years of our marriage. I gave up taking photos for family occasions or vacations several years ago when I tired of seeing the highlights of our life through a viewfinder. Last year I discovered my cell phone could take video. I've already forgotten where I put the video disc.

There is a walnut bed my wife's grandfather made when he was first married. We keep it ("It doesn't eat," my wife says) in hopes one son or the other will decide to use it.

If only they had been born as short as their great-grandfather. The high chair our sons used is there. So are three sleds that haven't seen snow in more than 20 years.

All of what I've just described is fairly basic basement stuff. Our war is against everything else, which I estimate to be about a big U-Haul truck full. My major contribution has been electronic gear that we've used or tried at one time or another in our entertainment center only to be replaced by something snazzier. My wife would be far happier if we only had a TV with an on-off knob and three or four channels. Instead, we have a museum of the history of the electronic age in our basement.

At this point I have moved everything out of the unfinished basement into the finished basement just so we can see what we have that we don't need or want anymore. I have built more shelves for storage. Soon, we will start what I call basement triage. The result, we both hope, is that what goes on the new storage shelves really ought to be there for some good reason.

God willing, we should be through this process in a few weeks.

Then we'll start banishing more stuff to the basement. We'll have room for it.

R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian and former editor of the Nevada Daily Mail.