I've conquered the basement, now back to the blog!

I haven't posted here in over a month. What have I been doing instead? Reclaiming my basement!

For years, the basement has been the catch-all for anything not wanted in other parts of the house. I've occasionally tried to clean it up from time to time, with varying degrees of success, but I finally reached the end of my patience with the mess about a month-and-a-half ago and started in earnest to clean it out. After many trips to Goodwill and filling the trash & recycling bins to the brim every week, I've finally got the room to where it's use-able and presentable. It's not done, but what's left is more fine-tooth comb type stuff as opposed to the bulldozing I've been doing (for instance, the boxes to the right of the desk in the pictures now are all items to be sorted and ultimately discarded, probably, with just a few things needing to be scanned, filed away or shredded).

Last year, I apparently already had it in my head that I was going to do this major work, even though at that point I wasn't ready to discard with the vehemence that I mustered up recently, but I was thinking ahead enough to take "before" pictures. I finally got to the point that I could do "after" pictures yesterday. Looking at them on my computer last night, I realized I took the "before" pictures exactly a year before the "after" pictures. The before pictures really are the basement at its worst. It got better, but then bad again, before I finally reached the end of my rope and started in on it last month. These pictures should give you an idea of the extent of the transformation:

The basement is now going to function as my office and craft room, freeing up the spare bedroom to actually be a spare bedroom (imagine!). I've got so much more room to work down here than I had upstairs, with my two folding tables in the middle functioning as one big table. I'm excited to be creative in my "new" space!

Now that this is (mostly) done, I feel like I can bring my brain back around to writing, and that includes this blog. I have to warn you, though: In the time since I last posted, I've seen The Avengers twice (and LilGirl and I have plans to see it a third time this weekend). I'm a leeeetle obsessed. I promise not to be nearly as fangirly here as I have been on my Tumblr. There's just so much I want to explore and dissect about the movie and this is probably the best place to get it out. I hope you'll bear with me and that I'll get over Avengers-itis soon. :)