The Fletchers' Dark Little Secret...

Our basement is hideous.

It's a nightmare of clashing colors, old/cheap/broken particle board furniture, toys the kids love mixed up with toys the kids hate strewn all over the place, paper hole punches and crumpled up crayon drawings, frames purchased from Walmart in the nineties (wasn't stylish then and sure isn't now). You get the point.

Saturday I just couldn't take it anymore. I told Steve I wanted to throw all of it away, especially the sagging entertainment center and the ugly beast of a desk, and he thought I was crazy. "It's a basement. It's supposed to look like crap," he said. "Besides, we can't get rid of that stuff. We can't afford to replace it." "I don't care," I said. "I'd rather have an empty room than a room full of garage sale junk. It makes me unhappy." "Where will we put the computer and the TV then?" he asked. "As far as I'm concerned, they can get tossed out with the rest," I told him. Now he thought I was REALLY crazy. He turned his attention away from me and back to the basketball game in session.

That's when I started going all "freaky female" on him, telling him that I was not just his personal maid and babysitter, asking him who was he to make the call on whether we kept all that junk or not anyway, and why was he only concerned with making me happy when it was convenient for him, but if it wasn't then, who cares about Jenn? And on and on...(Please tell me other wives do this, too. Not often, but sometimes?)

He stared at me for a while without saying anything. (Steve's a natural peacemaker and doesn't like to fight, so when I usually do this--which I try not to do too often--it gets results.) Then he began cleaning out the top three drawers of his dresser and all the junk out of our closet until it was downright spacious. "Here," he said, "Take your clothes out of your armoire and put them here. Then we can get rid of the entertainment center and put the TV in your armoire. I think we can also throw the desk out and put the computer on something else." Then we spent the rest of the night and half of Monday breaking down furniture, bagging up junk and finding a better spot for the things Steve truly could not let go. Then I used the money I was going to spend on a sewing machine to buy a new slip cover and pillows for the couch. Then I stripped the pictures off the walls and kept only the four pictures that I thought worked.

I tried to find pictures of our basement BEFORE the transition, but I obviously did not take many because it was so embarrassing to me. Here is the ugly old denim slipcover that--no matter how many "matching" pictures we tried to hang--never went well with the green walls.








Here is a VERY flattering picture of the entertainment center (and what looks like an episode of last season's American Idol). I tried to put baskets on the entertainment center to draw some attention away from it. Trust me, it is hideous. What you can't see are the doors long since broken off and the way it sagged in the middle. And don't get me started on the curtains, the pictures, the rug. Ack.

So here is the cleaned out, updated version. Time will tell, but I think I like it. At least it is clean and dejunked. (Note: the rocking chair was a non-negotiable Steve item.)

The armoire (which is tan, not pink as it appears in this photo) and the picture which I know is too small. That'll have to be replaced later.

Here's the new computer area. I wish I had a picture of what it used to look like. This is so much tidier.

Even Steve likes it better now. Phew.