Organizing the Dreaded Basement

The first thing that you will want to do to clean up your basement is get rid of the cobwebs. You will definately want to use a portable vacuum to do this. Using cob web dusters will only move the cobwebs around and get them stuck on the walls. After you have gotten the cob webs off of the ceiling you will want to vacuum the walls of the basement as well. Make sure that the ceiling, walls and stairs (behind the stairs as well) are clean and cob web free. Once you have finished doing that, you will want to vacuum the entire basement floor. You will probably want to put everything up on shelves to get it out of your way. Otherwise, you can move around the boxes but make sure to vacuum under the boxes.

Next you will want to briefly go through all the boxes. Take everything that you want to use and put it on the stairwell in some type of box or bag. These items you can take upstairs and clean. Peak through all of the boxes and look for holiday items which would include Christmas decorations, trees, halloween costumes, decor and all other holiday decor. You need to put all these items close to eachother but keep each holiday seperated. You can place everything in one box and label it with a marker so you know what is in the box.

The next thing you want to do is take all the home decor and put it in one box. You can put all the home decor together. Make sure to label everything so you know what is inside of the box. You can place candles, pictures, mirrors, fake plants, clocks and all other items in this section. You can also put old silverware in here as well. If you have a lot of home decor you will want to seperate all of it by category and label the box. Keep candleholders and candles together. You might want to leave some out for an emergency pack in the basement in case the power goes out.

Take all of your old bills and place them in a box. Take all of your magazines and place them in a different box. For all items that you don’t want anymore I would suggest bringing a trash can downstairs for items that smell or are broken. All other items you can sell at a rummage sale or you can sell them on ebay as well. Don’t throw away perfectly good items. Give them away to friends if you don’t want to have a rummage sale or sell them on ebay. Keep all the items that you don’t want in one box and mark it “SELL”.