What lurks beneath the stairs

So  a virtual miracle happened yesterday. The husband consented to sort and organize and clean...what lurks beneath the stairs. This man loathes this kind of cleaning. If I gently ask, it's like I'm asking him to go for a vascectomy with a rusty blade...lordy the look on his face.

We started in the recroom with his scouting things. He has a whole big bookshelf filled with tubs of different items and stacks of papers and binders. I honestly thought that if we could do this, it would be OMG wow. I told him to look at it and imagine 1/5th of it gone. Hint...use a weird fraction, outside of the traditional 1/2, 1/4, 3/4 etc. It confuses them. The shelf was bursting. I never told him to throw anything out. I just unpacked a tub and held each item up and he either said to keep or toss. Not a whole lot came out of the tubs but when we hit the papers and magazines etc, we finally saw some progress.

Results - 2 big black garbage bags to go to recycling and 2 big ones to go to trash. Everything fits on the shelf. Success

We moved then to DS1's hockey gear. Camp starts in 10 days and we need to see what fits and what doesn't. I was crossing my fingers the whole time as last year he'd grown so much that it was a big pile  of $$$ to replace what no longer fit. A bunch of things went to the garage sale boxes, some to the trash and we were left with a small list to replace, thank god.

I went upstairs to do dishes and in a bit got a call up saying 'do you want to do more?'

I was stunned but I moved quickly lest he change his mind.

So we headed to the dreaded under the stairs. It's been a catch all for all kinds of crap and storage for years. Most of the stuff is his so as much as I wanted to go down and just purge my heart out, it really wasn't my place.

It took 2 hours but ohhhhh the results.

• 12 bags to the trash (had to drive to the dump and pay to dispose)
• 7 bags to the garage sale pile
• we all need a chlorotriplon for the dust
• it's clean under there!! there's room. (for more stuff that was just piled in other places)

We found the darndest things under there. 2 big boxes full of hats. like ball hats. He used to save/collect them. OMG they smelled musty lol. His old stereo we will try to sell at the garage sale as well as a box of records. surprisingly, people still buy them. There was a box of kids winter clothes I had forgotten about. I washed them all and put them on the line to air out for the garage sale. My grad dress was under there. I didn't know it was there...thought it was at my mom's. If only I could fit into it LOL My grad jacket was there too as well as husband's. The box of blankets that were made for the boys' births was there. They smelled great but that was because I had them in a rubbermaid tub with a mess of bounce sheets.

It was great to get this done. My garage is a mess right now filling up with things for the sale, but it's nice to see all that 'won't be there anymore' once we sell it.

And my husband....well his back is out today. Actually it was hurting yesterday morning before we even started. Every year for the past 10 years he has taken holidays the first week of August and EVERY year during that week, his back goes out. I swear he's like the August ground hog!!