Lost Treasures

NOTE: I typed this blog back in January but never posted it cause I didn't take the pictures off my camera. But I decided to share it anyway.

I know it has been a while (again) since I posted about the basement and Project Purge, but we have been making some progress. It is slow going right now, football playoffs have kept us upstairs on the couch on the weekends and being busy with the kids and other small projects have kept us busy on the week nights. But we have organized the stuff in the main area of the basement and cleaned up and made room to start tackling the closet down there.

So now we are getting a box out of the closet every few days and going through it. Some boxes are easier to go through then others. I have found a few boxes that I have had to put in a "revisit" pile. I don't like that. I don't like feeling like I'm keeping something because I feel I have too not because I want to. I don't like feeling like I can't make a decision about weather I can "part" with this or not.

Here's an example of a box that has been put in the "revisit" pile. A box that contains glass "fruit" dishes with long stems and some brandy snifters that I inherited from my grandmother. We don't drink brandy and have never used the fruit dishes. We don't have room for them in the cabinets in our kitchen (hence the box in the basement), so what good are they to us? They are in the revisit pile because I can't decide if getting rid of them is "throwing away a family treasure," or if they are something we would use if we had the room in our cabinets (cause we may some day.)

Can you see my dilemma or am I crazy? It's ok if you think the second I may be leaning that way.

The more exciting boxes to open are the ones that contain lost treasures that we haven't seen in 5+ years. For example. We opened over the weekend the box that had our bear cookie jar I got at my bridal shower. When we moved to our house from our apartment we had less counter space (go figure we also have less closet space) and therefor kept this gem boxed up. In the same box was also a pretty crystal candy dish that was my husbands great-grandmothers. We got it from his grandmother 6 years ago and it has spent most of those 6 years in a box. Well we have since found room in our kitchen for both of these gems. The bear is on the counter and the candy dish is up on top of the cabinets ready to hold cute little seasonal items like and egg or 2 at Easter and some pretty flower in the summer. There were other items in the box and some got donated and another pretty crystal votive holder made it's away to our bedroom to be displayed.


So the lesson we are learning is there are treasures we have forgotten we have, or know we have but haven't made an appropriate place for in our home. I am also learning that this is hard and that I AM up for the challenge.

Here are some pictures of how it looks today.


Current Basement Veiw

Looking Better

This is the Donate Pile