Basement purgatory.

So that one day I will not end up on a show about hoarders, I’ve decided to tackle the basement storage a little each week. I’ve kept everything down there for one reason or another. It was never junk. It was never trash. It all had some purpose or memory. Or so I thought.

It started a couple of weeks ago on a rainy Sunday. I was doing laundry. I decided that instead of walking past the mounds of boxes and bags strategically placed and balanced, I would stop and see what I had been saving all these years. I’ve been living in my current residence for just over 9 years. It was the first place I moved to after college and after moving out of my family’s home. I brought a lot of stuff with me then. I have also accumulated piles more since. Christmas gifts of faux useful items I would never use. That’s the majority of the new additions. I found two wine openers and two different kinds of electronic multi-gadget chargers just as I was scratching the surface.

All of those gifts without a use were being saved for a yard sale. An enormous yard sale with tables full of goods still fresh in their packaging. Unopened and freshly dusted off. I would make thousands. Pay off debts. Buy a new car. The possibilities were endless.

The yard sale was supposed to occur every year for at least the last five years. I think I’ve reached the realization that it isn’t actually going to occur. Hence the digging into the depths of Whole Foods paper bags and boxes piled on top of boxes. It was then I realized I had been misguided. This wasn’t all meant to be saved.

My first discovery was a paper bag consisting of a pair of diving flippers, a bicycle helmet, a set of windshield wipers for an old Volvo I have since sold and one black wool winter glove. Another bag, a shoe bag, was filled with tissue paper, a few receipts and a sheet of bubble wrap. WHY? Why was I saving these things? Clearly they had no sentimental value. And they weren’t going to be sold at the yard sale.

Most of the things I’m finding do not in fact have any purpose. So the trashy stuff I’m throwing away. I’m setting the old gifts aside and am actually holding a yard sale by the fall or they are going out in the trash. There are some good things there too, things I meant to save and keep hold of. They’ll be staying behind with a whole lot of extra space.