Ever have a snowball effect?

We’ve been here 3 1/2 years now and the projects haven’t seemed to diminish. Some have been going on that long…

Like this one. When we moved in the basement was wet. I mean, really wet. And moldy. Just gross. We didn’t want to store anything down there. It was basically a whole lot of unusable space. But, we wanted to be able to use it. So we started waterproofing it. And by we I mean Andrew.

Because our water table is so high it’s moist down there for about 11 months of the year. Only in February, when the ground has frozen pretty much through to the molten lava, does it dry up down there. So, every winter we get as much waterproofing done as we can. It probably could have been done in one winter, but, well, life happens.

So, here we are, on winter number four, hoping to finish it up. And so begins the snowball. “Let’s clean out the last half of the basement to waterproof it.”

Seems simple enough. Except to clean it out means to move stuff to the other side of the basement. Yep, no big deal.

Except a couple months ago I went through the tubs of shoes I had stuffed in the attic and matched them up and laid them out in size order.

So, now they take up half the floor space on the other side of the basement. I’ve been thinking for a while about how to store these. Tubs just weren’t working. We couldn’t find the match, or we’d forget to look through and go buy new shoes. I wanted to actually make use of all these shoes for the younger kids, especially as farm shoes so they didn’t get their good ones totally trashed.

Okay, let’s put the shoes on shelving. Great. What shelving? Well, there’s all this shelving up already. It’s just covered in jars and jars of applesauce because we had a bumper crop this fall and I made applesauce until I thought I’d never want to smell or see or taste applesauce again…

Guess where I wanted all that applesauce stored? You guessed it, in the cold cellar…where I needed shelves.

The other half of the other side of the basement has been filling up with bags and boxes and bags and boxes. No, I’m not a hoarder! We’ve been collecting donations so the kids can have a garage sale and raise money for their mission trips this summer. We’ve been so blessed by so many who have brought over donations! But they have to store somewhere until this winter ends. (Will it end?)

I have to sort through all this and get it priced too, mind you. And there’s no room with the shoes spread everywhere. You can even see the edge of the shoe store in the corner of this photo! I’m telling you…snowball turning into an avalanche.

If anyone knows me, you know how orderly I am. I’m the epitome of a type A. Keep it neat. Put it away. Don’t keep too much stuff. This is about killing me!!!

So, in order to waterproof the basement, things need to be moved to this half that is already waterproofed. In order to moved things in here, garage sale stuff needs to be gone through and organized and some of it needs to be moved to the shed. In order to go through the garage sale stuff the shoes need to be moved. In order to moved the shoes the applesauce needs to move. In order to move the applesauce I need shelves.

Yep, the shelves I’ve been wanting since the beginning of time (okay, just since we moved in)!

Enter my awesome hubby who didn’t want to do anything today…

Guess what that is???

THOSE ARE MY SHELVES GOING IN MY COLD CELLAR!!!!

I might be just a little excited. As I type I can hear the drill going! Woohoo!

The avalanche is still blasting down the hill at full speed, but at least there’s an amazing man with a solution at hand!

Isn’t homesteading fun?!