The Hangout

Let's tell you about our basement. I like to compare it to a black hole. Every little and big piece of crap we have in the house, slowly makes its way to it, never to be seen again. Every unopened moving box from one of our many moves is stacked precariously against the walls. Every spring it floods (not a lot, but still annoying) and I find other things I never got around to putting on blocks.

When I need something which I know is in the basement, nine out of ten times I can't even find it. So I was considering more and more to just make a big bonfire and get rid of all the crap, apart from that i never had the energy or inclination to actually start on sorting it out. And the fact that a bonfire really isn't very practical where we live.

I always vaguely thought that one day we should finish it and actually USE this space instead of putting more stuff in it. I also thought it would be a cool place for the kids to hang out with their friends. That is, if it hadn't been so full of crap. Still, never felt strongly enough about this to actually DO something about it.

Fast forward to my friend's garage sale. She needed help to get her pingpong table from the basement, which resulted in six kids happily playing together, having tons of fun with this pingpong table. When the kids weren't listening, she offered it to me, which forced me to actually put my thoughts onto the basement. It would be the perfect location for it. Maybe this was the time to actually start using it.

I decided to talk to my kids about it. 'Would you guys like to have a hangout with a pingpong table, television, bunch of couches? It does mean that we do have to clean up the basement though. And I will need a lot of help for that.' They are ecstatic. Their very own hangout! And have been very very good about cleaning out the basement, finding all kinds of interesting stuff and getting rid of a lot of crap.

We decided not to finish it for now, i'd rather have that money go towards the mortgage (only $35,000 left and the house is OURS!!! Maybe two years). It even has more atmosphere if we don't have it finished right??? Seriously, I want to put some old carpeting on the floor (i'll buy remnants) which we can just roll up and dry out if we have our annual flooding. But the kids will have their very own place to be with their friends, nice and cool in the summer.

I got rid of a bunch of garbage bags full of stuff already, this is things we will NEVER ever ever have to see again! Such joy!