De Profundis -- Out of the Depths

This post isn't, strictly speaking, about getting out of Dodge. But I ran across this in the process of looking at html files as I move our family web site from its (formerly free) space on Geocities to our new wholly-owned domain. (There's not much there yet, but it should be populated within a week. I need the Wizard to help me figure out how to set up sub-directories for our new space, and he's working out of town this week.)

Anyway, I came across a tale about cleaning out the basement in our previous house. There are no pictures, but parts of the story are pretty discouraging. It really sounds like we haven't made much progress since 1997.

The Grim Truth:
We moved into this house almost 10 years ago, put everything we didn't need immediately into the basement, promptly had two babies, and basically haven't been into the basement (except to change the cat boxes and to put in more we-don't-need-it-now stuff) ever since. Until July 4, 1997, that is. Armed with latex gloves, a broom, and 4 kids, we ventured into the depths.

Do you have any idea how many empty cardboard boxes a family of six can accumulate in 10 years? There were food cartons (we buy in bulk through a food coop), computer cartons (did we really buy four computers?), and cartons from things we don't even own any more. And did you know that the town manager for the Girl Scout cookie sale is allowed to keep all the empty GS cookie cartons?

The most amazing thing about the number of boxes we found is that we are avid recyclers. Every other week when the recycling truck comes by, we have three or four times as much to recycle as we have to throw away. How did we miss so many cardboard boxes? Was there a secret cardboard box breeding program going on in our basement? Maybe everyone in town was coming by and leaving their cardboard boxes in the basement while we were out. Come to think of it, that might account for some of the boxes we found....

Then there are all the toys that nobody (trust me) in this house is ever going to play with again. Yet, when I pulled out the old Johnson&Johnson rattle with the red and white cardboard tube and the blue balls,

my 7-year-old son [the future Future Vet] thought that was the neatest thing he had ever seen in his life! It almost took an act of Congress to get it away from him. It's amazing how every toy that a kid ever threw down in disgust becomes an instant favorite once it has spent a few years mildewing in the basement.

Speaking of mildew, did I mention the water problems we had in the basement? Not only have we had occasional seepage, causing us to put almost everything up on concrete blocks to keep it dry, we've had a couple of bona fide basement floods over the years. We really thought we'd removed everything that had been damaged by water as the damage occurred. Guess again!

We began by pulling everything out and strewing it about the back yard. Obvious trash we put into a pile. Less obvious trash we sorted into general categories like "why ever did we keep this", "throw away while the kids aren't looking", "could be sold at a yard sale but why bother", etc.

The end of the story:
That is apparently all I had time to write back in 1997. We moved out of that house 6 years later and, if I recall correctly, we gave away lots and lots of STUFF (like all of our bookshelves and the dining room set and the piano and some beds), and still ended up having someone haul away a couple of truck-loads of STUFF from the basement.

Well, we had had six more years to accumulate things, after all.