Before/after + spontaneous fun!

Storage Room: Before + After

Okay, as promised, I took some pictures of my big storage room clean out! Sadly, I don’t really have the best “before” pictures.

Here’s the thing- this storage room wasn’t always a disaster. We moved into this house in 2013, and I’d say it spent the first ~6 years or so in nice, neat shape (i.e. the post move-in/ original organized state).

Then in 2019 we remodeled our kitchen, and shortly after that we drywalled and resurfaced our garage floor. So EVERYTHING from the kitchen AND the garage got moved down to the storage room, temporarily….

During that time, the wheels totally fell off. Since it was hard to even walk in there, we got super lax about putting other things away in the right places. Things started to pile up.

Also, time just worked against us. It turns out you start to accumulate things over time as you raise a family, especially if you’re not really careful! We ended up with many items that ideally should have been cleaned out or sorted or tossed in the moment, but out of laziness or just “being too busy to deal with this right now”, we just stuck them in the storage room. Out of sight, out of mind. 😉

Examples:

• Every home project would add gallons of leftover paint or supplies to the pile.
• More and more school projects or keepsakes accumulated with each passing year (and I didn’t do a good enough job of weeding them out/ organizing before storing…).
• Anything that we’d weed out from the upstairs rooms would end up in the storage room, to get it out of sight, without necessarily deciding if we really needed to keep it… or else it would wind up in a pile down there for “eventual donation”.
• Larger items, like the old hamster cages after the hamsters died, also ended up down there. I mean, where do you put them?! I wanted to try to sell them online (they’re big aquarium type cages, with many accessories- they were $$!). But of course, that takes time + effort, so I stuck them in the storage room for “later”.
• Piles of favorite kids’ books or keepsake type toys that I maybe wanted to keep (for memory’s sake, or future grandkids?!) but needed a better long term storage container to preserve them or allow me to put them in the attic.

Here’s one picture of the dire state it eventually ended up in:

Well, I’m pleased to say, after 5 full years of adding this to my Annual Goals List, it is finally DONE!!!!! 🎉🎉🎉🎉

There are empty spaces on the shelves! The floor is clear! Everything is labeled! Everything has a “home”!!

(Note about the clothes hanging in the middle of the room- the previous owners hung this iron bar in there, which is extremely sturdy and somehow became a place that I hang random clothes, mostly dresses, that I rarely wear, or certain off-season things. My bedroom closet is not very large, so this is necessary, especially with Wisconsin’s 4 seasons. I actually have another closet in the guest room I could use, too, but I already have other stuff in there 🤪 and this works well and is very accessible.)

You guys, I worked SO HARD on this storage room. Like, I opened every box of Halloween decorations and threw away anything I no longer use. I went through every item in the kids’ memory boxes and tossed “art projects” or misc. items that I shoved in there but were not actually keep-worthy. I went through all the old photo albums and random envelopes with pictures and sorted them all into boxes (“pre-kids, kids + family, wedding pics, etc.”). We tossed probably a dozen cans of old paint. I threw away my wedding dress. Old baskets and boxes without lids are gone. We took at least 5 trips to Goodwill. I gave away and/or sold many other items.

I don’t even want to tally up how many weekend hours I spent on this since June. I am proud to say I think I was exceptionally ruthless, at least for me, about what got to stay! And it feels amazing.

One side of our basement rec room looked like this all summer as I worked through this. (I say I, because it really was ME. I’m not giving Ivan much credit on this one at all. Yes, he did do the Goodwill runs for me, and he weeded through several big boxes of cords and cables when I asked, but he spent a literal fraction of the time I did, so no, he’s not getting internet credit here. 😜)

Big shout out to my mom, too, who was here this past week and helped me with the final push to the finish line!!! She helped me really tie up the loose ends, including some final organizing, a couple more donation runs, and other pesky tasks.

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Badgers home opener

Changing gears, just wanted to photo dump quick from our spontaneous fun night out on Thursday!

On Wednesday, Ivan’s work offered him some UW Badgers football tickets for Thursday night’s home opener. We rarely go to games, the weather looked PERFECT, night games are fun and being the season opener, that was an extra thrill, too.

Unfortunately, the boys couldn’t join us (we had 4 tickets); Ethan had his first real soccer game at 7 pm, which I was planning to go to and felt really bad about missing, but he assured us that he didn’t care and we should just go to the football game (“the Badger game will be more fun than my game!”, he said) and Asher went up north with a friend for the weekend.

Quick funny story: Since we rarely go to games, we had no idea really where to park, and I didn’t bother researching options. We just headed down by the stadium, which was, of course, an absolute zoo of students and cars and people everywhere. On a whim, we got in line and tried to pull into the closest parking ramp (which seemed too good to be true?) and yes, it was. lol. At the entrance, the man said, “Do you have your permit?” Ivan answered, “Oh, no, we don’t have one. We thought we could just pay on entry.” And the guy laughs and says, “HA! This ramp sold out last June.” Oh, lol. Ok, then can we do a U-turn and get out?! 😆

We started to head a little further away, figuring we’d have to walk at least a mile, when we turned down a side street literally a 1/2 block from the main stadium entrance, and lo and behold, there was a single open parking space right on the street, for free! (We had driven by a few “lots” in private residences where people were selling parking spots for $35-40.)

I couldn’t believe it!!! It was literally the best parking spot you could ask for. (And no, it wasn’t a no parking zone or restricted- we triple checked, and yep, it was legit!). The frat guy on the porch drinking a beer gave us a thumbs up and a nod of approval for our good fortune. 😅

This whole story is just note-worthy because it’s kind of a running joke in our family that Ivan is a PARKING WIZARD. First, he’s a most excellent parallel parker, so no spot is off limits. Second, he just seems to be incredibly LUCKY at finding a magic open parking spot in an otherwise totally crowded/ all-full area. I can’t tell you how many times it seems that there won’t be a spot for miles, and then suddenly, bam, Ivan somehow gets the prime spot. hahaha! It’s so funny. (This luck does not rub off on me. I’m totally the opposite- I’d have probably ended up like 4 miles away. 🤣)

It was a perfect night. The weather had just the slightest touch of fall in the air- I was comfy in a t-shirt until about 3rd quarter and then slipped my hoodie on.

Our seats were awesome- right on the 50 yardline, and row 25.

The vibe for the night game was killer! All the students just got back to town and everyone was amped for the first game. They handed out red light up arm bands to everyone at the entrance, so that was super cool too.

Here’s a video of UW’s long standing “Jump Around” tradition, done between the 3rd- 4th quarters. They play the song Jump Around and everyone jumps! 😀 It’s so fun and was especially great at night.

We stayed until the end and didn’t get home until after midnight on a Thursday night, but it was totally worth it! Bonus, the Badgers won.

Now, onto Labor Day weekend which I am PUMPED for. I kind of live for Memorial and Labor Day weekends…. the 3 day weekend/holiday but no expectation of cooking or big traditions or really anything (at least in our family). So excited for an OPEN WEEKEND to kind of just do whatever we want!! awwww yeahhhhhh!!!

Daily Gratitude:

I am grateful that Asher is up north with his friend’s family this weekend! He’s living his best life fishing and boating and loving it. School starts for him on Tuesday!