It's not very well lit in the basement, I suppose due to cluttered windows, missing bulbs and things stacked underneath the lights. Therefore, I worked for a few hours with a headlamp. I felt like a miner looking for precious goods! No precious goods to be found, just a lot to throw out.
There was so much dust down there that by the time I was done, I had a headache and my nose was running like mad. If I had a mask, I would have used it. Better yet, if I knew where my package of masks was purchased to pour resin, I would have pulled one out and used it! When I woke up, I felt as though I had been crying all night, due to the plugged up sinuses. All day my nose has been running.
At least I can say I did get a very small bit accomplished, although probably not enough to make a noticeable difference. I kept going up and down the stairs to get things out. The difficult part was that today was garbage day, and our can is so small that I knew there was NO way it would all fit in there. The can was full before I started cleaning!
This morning the second I woke up and felt the way I did, physically, I remembered what I had done the night before and almost jumped out of bed to see if the trash had picked up yet. They hadn't! Yes!! This meant I could run outside and fill the neighbors' cans with the remaining bags of trash before my mom had time to secretly go through them and see what I had gotten rid of!
I'm happy to report that all was put in the cans and nothing I had taken out of the house remained on the property. The recycle can was also full to the max.
The trash is besides all the things I decided could be donated. I filled up my car with donations after taking care of the trash and dropped those off on my way to work this morning.
I took a picture of what was removed, but there was actually still I think two or three more bags that didn't make it into the picture.
This first one is of the recyclable goods that I overfilled the can with. See that clear Cascade container sitting at the top of the paper bag? My mom tried to bring that one back in the house claiming that her friend wants them. Yes, I know her friend likes them to store things in, but it was in the corner of the basement never to be seen again to it could be given away. I said, "It doesn't even have a lid, you can't give that to her!" She gave in and tossed it.
All of the bags and box closest in the picture were things I threw in the trash. These are what I was most worried about my mom going through because there were things that I could definitely see her keeping, but also completely useless items.
A little bit of history. I used to be very into coupons and found many wonderful deals. Sometimes it was for things we couldn't or wouldn't use, but we would keep them to give away. The giving only happened some of the time, and one can only have so many garage sales. Therefore, in these bags was a total of about 50, yes, FIFTY boxes of Electrasol dishwashing tablets that went bad after so many years of sitting. We don't have a dishwasher, but I tried them in a friend's washer and they left a bad film. Therefore, they ALL went in the trash! What a shame.
When I realized that my couponing was causing a problem, I stopped. It was very time consuming and took up SO much space!
In the basement I found boxes of boxes, boxes of bags, and many bags full of bags. There are boxes down there that are empty and just taking up space. There were a couple of spider carcasses that really freaked me out! However, at least I did not come across even ONE live spider :)
I took a short video that I've thought about putting on YouTube, what do you think?
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