I love organization.  Everything should be in its place.

The one place we had not organized was the basement.  The basement is damp and dark and has spiders and things.  It’s not a place I’m apt to “hang out” in order to spend time organizing.

Holiday decorations, luggage, and other stuff we didn’t need in the house were deposited there when we moved in last October.  While most things were in storage bins, some things were still in cardboard moving boxes.  We put 2” x 4” boards on the floor to keep the boxes dry – but it was an unorganized mess.  Ugh.

With the rain we’ve had, everything kept getting damp.  We didn’t realize how damp until two weeks ago when we opened the basement to retrieve our luggage.  It had grown mold.  It got hosed off, scrubbed with soap and disinfected with sunshine – and it was still disgusting, so we bought new luggage that will now be stored in the attic.

But, we still had a moldy basement.  We bought shelf brackets, hardware and a dehumidifier and spent two days in the dark, dingy, damp dungeon – cleaning out cobwebs, building shelves and throwing out moldy stuff.  The dehumidifier tank holds 90 pints of water.  Chris empties it twice a day.  The basement floor is the driest it’s been since we found this place.  It must be sucking up water from the springhouse because it just keeps filling up, and we keep dumping it down the drain.

Finally, it feels cool and dry, the shelves are in place and it’s organized!  But I still don’t like the spiders.