Cleaning out the basement

One of the things the insurance adjuster mentioned to me when we found the water damage was that we needed to go through the basement and our insurance company would reimburse us for anything water damaged.  I didn't tell him that in my opinion, 99% of the stuff in the basement was junk anyhow, but I realized that I did need to clean it up in case the contractor had to work down there.  It is January in Ohio after all.....and it would be easy access to that corner of the house if he wanted to set up a table saw in there rather than stand out in the cold.

Todd went hunting in PA January 1 - 3, so the kids and I started cleaning the basement out.  Well, rather, I cleaned and the kids fought disagreed over which of their old toys they were keeping.  I finally sent them upstairs to clean their rooms.  Some things are better NOT done with them around:)  We did make a deal with the kids - they could pick some of their favorite toys to keep, the rest will either be sold on Ebay or donated to Goodwill (Tyler elected to keep his tractors and sell his Geo Trax Train set - which takes up the 4 totes on the left hand side of the picture below).

5 hours later (yes, it took a long, long time), I had a small pile of stuff to keep:

See that chest off to the right hand side?  That was a Christmas present of Jessie's from her grandmother - and it was packed full of dress up clothes (fancy dresses, pretty hats, high heeled shoes).  I'm afraid the chest may be too water damaged to be repaired, but we were able to salvage some of the clothes inside it.

I had a small pile to go to Goodwill.

And I had a rather large pile of things to pitch:

I had 3 rubbermaid totes of  kids clothing and blankets I wanted to keep to pass down, which I have just finished washing it all and repacking it into the totes to make sure it was still good. 

Todd got home the Tuesday night after New Year's, and we spent a little bit of time down there sorting through the trash pile - just making sure there was nothing in there we REALLY wanted that had been thrown away by accident.  We flattened the boxes to be burned, bagged up the trash and will haul it to the end of our driveway next week. 

Funny though, as Todd and I were finishing up down here, it led to a discussion about my sewing/computer/crafting room and how to organize it and make it more useful (which started off with a bookshelf that is down in the basement that Todd said I should move up there - but I can't move it up there if I can't get through the door right now, can I?).  I'm at a standstill with finishing our bedroom until the water damage gets fixed, and my sewing room is truly a disaster.  But we have a plan for moving some furniture, and hopefully in the next couple of weeks it will be done.....