The Bane of My Existence ... The Basement

We are very fortunate that our house has a finished basement.  When we bought this house, we knew that it would be our office/mancave and eventually an office/playroom for kids.  We painted it a sunny yellow (Behr Butter Cookie) and off we went…

As the kids got older, the amount of stuff multiplied exponentially.  Although they loved having their toys and blocks and cars and stuff in the living room (and kitchen…and bathroom…oh, I digress), we were constantly reminding them that the basement was their playroom.

There were two problems to this theory, however.  First, the kids didn’t like going down the basement by themselves when they were really young – it was kind of scary and away from me in the kitchen or living room.  Second, we didn’t really have any good storage down there.  We had thrown a few bookcases down there and some plastic bins on wheels, but the amount of stuff quickly overflowed from those containers.

So, I purchased bins and boxes and shelves from Ikea and Target…all to no avail, really.  It seemed as though every time I went down to the basement, the toys were EVERYWHERE…all over the floor and in bins and on shelves.  And all jumbled up.  Despite my best efforts to be organized and to impart such ideas to my children, I would find cherries from Hi Ho Cherry O in the superhero bin.  And, what's worse, there was no room to actually play with those toys.  In short, crap was everywhere.

I have been scouring organization ideas blogs and websites and finally got the inspiration and idea for how to organize the basement.  I went to Ikea and bought a room full of stuff – a table, chairs, tubs, more tubs, baskets, stuff to make wall art, etc.  And then I went to work.

I forgot to take real “before” pictures, so this is about an hour into the project, after I realized I should take “before” pictures:

Here are “during” pictures:

And, at long last, the “after”:

I love it.  I moved the art supplies down to the basement, which makes more sense because (a) now they are out of my kitchen and (b) M’s color-your-own castle monstrosity thing is down there.  I created a reading area, with a floor lamp for extra light, a beanbag, and a basket of fun books.  I put everything in clear bins so that the kids can see what’s in them.  The only bin that isn’t see-through is an Ikea bin where I spray-adhesived cool fabric I found in the as-is area of Ikea.  I loved this idea, and plan to do it to three more bins for our living room, too.  Here’s a picture of that bin, but the picture didn’t come out great because of the lighting and the dark fabric (it’s colorful with a bird on it, with black background).

Everything is organized with like things together.  For example, there is a basket for blocks, one for musical instruments, one for superhero action figures, one for cars (well, three for cars, actually), etc.  You get the idea.

I love big, graphic images.  For the art down here, the numbers are a poster from Ikea that I framed, and the letters are a pillow case I found in the as-is room at Ikea for $2, cut it and framed it.

And I love this...found for $5.99 at Ross - a place for artwork and a nice message...

And here, for kicks, are gratuitous pictures of my dogs.  Bear is bored; Hank is worn out by all this organizing.

So that’s what I’ve been doing for the last three days (and nights).  Let's see if the kids keep it organized (or at least clean up after they trash it).

Time to get back to the real world now.  Maybe, if the kids stay in the basement, I could get some work done...