Dungeons and Dragons

Our basement is like a dungeon. Damp, dark, and dirty. At certain times of the year, we have a river running through it, over to the sump pump, where the water gets sucked up and sent out to the field.

Our old house has rubble walls, and the basement is unusable - except for being a place to toss things we don't know what to do with.

We have lived here nearly 18 years. In those 18 years, we've only ventured into the basement to look at the furnace, or to check the sump pump, or to put something down there that we might need later. BAD IDEA!

It's amazing how junk accumulates. Yesterday, our basement was full of old, moldy, damp and messy things. Broken bottles sat alongside good mason jars. Long-lost tools had been left with metal from the old furnace ducts, and fake Christmas trees, and coats that were no longer usable because of the dampness and subsequent mold.

Spring fever has hit our family, hard, this year. We rented a dumpster, and we have tossed tons and tons of garbage! Blessed relief! The yard is nearly done. We are tackling sheds and barn and garage and yard, sorting out metal to send to the scrapyard, keeping a few items, and tossing the rest.

Then there's the basement. A dungeon, remember?

Linda, bless her heart, tackled the dungeon yesterday. Boxes and boxes and boxes of damp, dirty, moldy stuff was carried upstairs and out to the dumpster. Patrick, Elena, and Tiana were willing helpers. Linda filled bins and they carried them, load after load, up the stairs, through the kitchen, and out to the big bin.

At the end of the day, I went downstairs to check. The transformation is amazing. Where once clutter abounded, there are bare (dirt) floors! Incredible!

There is still one more room to tackle today. Then we have to get a shop-vac (ours was tossed because it is defective) and vacuum all of the cobwebs. But after that, we will have a clean basement, and who knows what we might accomplish with that extra potential? We have considered digging it out and cementing the floor, gaining a minimum of 900 square feet of usable space. That may happen, some day.

But for now, we will rejoice that we can even walk down there. The disorder has been like a dragon, waiting to devour, always present, always making us nervous and unsettled. We've had plans to get down there and tackle the job, but it always seemed too overwhelming.

Enter Linda - the dragon-slayer!! The rest of us are singing the praises of this good "Knight in shining armour", because she went into battle, and she killed that nasty dragon.

Bless her heart.