pixxiefish in the sea: The HGTV Edition

Our basement is half-finished, and the main room has some exercise equipment (an elliptical machine which, yes, I do use sometimes, and a bunch of free weights which I don't touch but Randal has been known to), as well as an old desk of mine, our old TV, an area that I keep intending to use for sewing and other crafts, and all of our tools.

There's just one problem.



It's a mess and has been in various stages of mess for the last 3 years.

Tools here are on the left, and my sewing area on the right. It doesn't look sooooo bad, but that's mostly because I'd already pulled a few things out of the way before remembering to take a picture. Trust me - it was bad. The sewing area, not so much, but we couldn't find a single tool without a huge hunt. In fact, Randal had taken to keeping many tools in his computer room upstairs, so that we could actually find them when we needed them!

Saturday afternoon, I worked up the motivation necessary to finally, properly organize this space.




We bought some great resin shelving from Costco and I put 4 out of the 5 shelves in the tools area. Now we actually have space to store our tools properly!*




We moved the (old) TV from a side wall where it had languished for the past two years, to a wall facing the elliptical machine. Fancy that - I can now go on the elliptical machine and actually watch TV without having to crane my neck at a 45-degree angle!**




Look! I can see my desktop! I even got really ambitious and finally hung the shelf that had been sitting, waiting to be hung, on the table for 3 years. And look! There's even room on the shelf for more junk!

There's still a lot to be done, including the second half of this room (which is partially done but not ready for the Big Reveal yet, but I am so happy we finally got around to this. For more magnificence/detail, click on any of these photos to go to my Flickr site.



* The former "tool cabinet" was housed in an array of bins and bags that lived in an old TV stand that the former tenants had left behind. After 3 years of trying to make it functional, it has now finally met the garbage truck.

** Note to self: Go on elliptical machine. Now.