Stepping down from a dingy stairway, with some creepy sound track and anticipating the worst, essentially every Haunted Movie is recalled. Well, that is what most of us can think about when I mention BASEMENT. More often than not our basement is just a place of clutter which contains all that we want to discard or decide to sort things some time in future and future never comes. This becomes most ill utilized space. Nonetheless contrary to your belief it really doesn’t steal much of your time if you really decide on keeping this ignored part of your home spic and span neither does it require any special talents to bring this most ignored corner in some practical order! Often cluttered basement becomes a haven of comfort for many creepy crawlies, and remain dusty for years, until we are planning to shift our home to a whole new place or all in urgent need of an extra room.
Here we can look at some interesting basement declutter ideas that would perfectly do the job.
Usually, our focus is on cleaning our house all day and simply ignoring one such room that is our basement that cries for help every time we dump some stuff that has become of zero or low value, probably never to look back! If you put in some time and effort, it is sure that you can make your basement as perfect as your living room. Before you start the process to declutter basement, the first thing you have to do is to pen down what all you should do to see your basement sparkle! You may want to consider giving away the things which are not used for a very time. Do note with care how many things you have not used since year or two.
Sometimes, there may be some things that can be recycled or can be reused Piles of CD, empty kitchen boxes and bags, some shampoo tubes that we get from the hotel are often hoarded in the home basement only to be used some time in the future.
It always brings smile on my lips when I thump through the pages of my old school report cards, looking at my awesome grades and nice comments by my teachers actually they adds no more value to me. If this is the case with you too, and you attach a lot of emotional value to this stuff, you can frame a couple of them and throw away the rest!
We can pick up special occasion like Diwali, Ed, Christmas to schedule a yearly or biyearly cleaning and this should not essentially become a once in a lifetime project.
How to Declutter Your Basement?
So let us get on to the one week challenge to clear up all the trash in the basement!
01. Clean the Place to Sit for Basement Decluttering
Decluttering basement could be a whole week project or may be more. So, make it a point to do a preliminary cleaning just to ensure that you have a comfortable place to sit while doing this work, else stepping on some trash collection every time can definitely irritate you. If you don’t do this, groundwork, trust me, your work is going to get really harder!
There is a possibility some useful things are also lying there without your knowledge. Accidently stepping on something will end up those pieces also ending up finding a place in public garbage very soon not to mention can hurt you as well.
02. Labelling the Articles/Boxes Before you Organise Messy Basement
Once you get started for organizing basement, always place the things you have sorted out in a separate place or a labelled box. This would prevent things which you have sorted out being bundled up with junk which you haven’t even touched. Otherwise, you will end up doing a botched job. Keep different cartons or banker boxes labelling them as the garbage, donate, recycle, etc. This way it will be convenient to take the necessary action for the sorted things.
03. Allot a Particular Time to Declutter your Basement
Concentrating on one storage shelf at a time can be better option where smaller basements can be cleaned up in a week, bigger spaces may take up to a month. So rather than procrastinating the work bring some momentum and don’t be in a hurry to finish your work.
An organized approach will fetch really good results. If you do it slowly and steadily, you will find this room also as beautiful and functional as any other room of your home.
04. Start from One Area First for Organising Basement
You may start from choosing a place that takes lesser time to declutter your basement. This can definitely bring some level of satisfaction and motivate you to keep going, and gradually moving on to other areas of the underground room. I like to remove everything off the shelves and drawers as I go through them to really see what I have. It also clears the way for a good deep cleaning of shelving and drawers that may not have had a good clean in a while. Choose a particular place as a staging area where you can dump to place all the different boxes containing give away items or donate or complete junk items.
You can use a sticker for identifying which box should go straight to the dumpster, which one for donation. One interesting thing you will note is that every time you dump things in this staging room, you will clean it again and again. This way, you can keep this room tidy and clean. When you find these boxes getting filled up you can see your junk room getting uncluttered.
05. Cleaning the Space, Start with Smaller Ones
A messy space is always harder to clean than an organized space, so if your basement is anything like ours, there may be a little more dust and a few extra cobwebs hanging around that will need to be cleaned. Starting from the top of the room, clear out cobwebs from corners, clean out light fixtures, and wash down the walls if needed. Dust all surfaces, again moving from top to bottom. If you have windows in the basement, give them a wash as well as the window tracks and blinds. Clean along the baseboards and end with a good vacuum of the space. Also don’t forget to give a hard flooring surfaces a good cleaning. It is a wise idea to start with small junk item first. After finishing the light work, move on to the heavier ones. That will help you with smooth sailing in the toughest part of the job.
If you have so many small junk boxes to deal with, you can break down your job. Plan decluttering basement task for 2 hours every day, which will help you complete the job like a child’s play. Set up calendar time and monitor it every now and then. This way, you can complete it within a week’s time.
When it comes to house cleaning; our experts are always here to help you, go through the following links for the best advice from us for free!
15 House Cleaning Tips that can be Beneficial to Every Homeowner!
12 Cleaning Tips to Make Your Bathroom a Cleaning Breeze!
How to Clean Windows Like the Pros?
06. Stay Firm in Your Decision Once You Start Decluttering
It is quite easy to lose interest in organizing this messy basement which is kind of mundane job but the key is to keep going. Especially, when you have too many boxed and racks to tidy up, you feel dejected. There will always something more important happening in your life come up, and your decision to tidy up the underground stock room has gone to trash! However strong your will to make this work in the beginning this may not keep you motivated for long.
Despite it is never easy don’t have second thoughts on throwing away anything because it might be useful in the future. Because otherwise you will end having the basement cluttered as before only and taking the decluttering idea down the drain.
07. Organise and Ornament the Junk Space
Now that you are done with basement declutter job, it is time to add some decorative touches to make the space your own! You should now just be left with items that you truly love and want to display, so find a place to show them off! You may find at this stage that there are still items that you do not have room for and you may still need to do a little bit of extra purging.
Find out some things from the basement itself that you can convert them into decorative, display pieces. Don’t spend too much time in it as we are going to be there only a few numbers of times in a year. Now you are done, do plan and organize to store and stuff all the things for future, so that clutter it minimum in future and cleaning it in future never becomes a challenge.
In short, converting your basement into a warm private space, there could be couple of ideas to utilize this newly found hideaway like converting it in a spare guest room, party space, game room etc… Let all the hard work pay.
Pro tips are given by our experts to declutter other areas of your Home, refer the following articles and share it with your friends & family and thank us later!!!
15+ Tips to Declutter a Non-Modular Kitchen
Ways to Make a Studio Apartment Clutter-free!
How to Improve Your Bedroom Space?
Image Courtesy: Image 3, Image 6(a), Image 6(b)
Author Bio
Sanghamitra Sen – Sanghamitra is a newborn mother to a 9-month-old infant. She is learning new things about being mom and raising child. In general she is an HR professional by degree. She topped in her college and was sponsored to visit China for the Student Exchange Program due to her excellence in her MBA. Post her MBA in HR and Finance as Majors, she joined a Kolkata based digital marketing and training venture. Over the next 4 years, she grew into an amazingly gifted multi-faceted professional. Today she can demonstrate skills in all aspects of HR management, including her abilities as an L&D specialist. Due to her interest in the Digital Marketing field she also became a Social Media specialist.
She has also worked with a Digital Marketing Institute in Delhi, Helping them create the courses, promoting courses, helping students excel. Then she joined Crescendo Transcription Pvt Ltd as Vertical Head in the Digital Marketing department. After working for 6 and a half years into the corporate world, now she wants to work for her own dreams. She loves writing and wants to pursue this as her career. She used to write before but now she wants to do it fulltime and use her knowledge of digital marketing, HR, Lifestyle, Home designing and Health into writing some creative stuff.