So over the last few months we've been picking away at the clutter. We've already brought 2 carloads to the Goodwill, thrown away several full garbage bags, Freecycled about a dozen different groups of items, and sold some things on Craigslist. Seeing that progress, all of that glorious open space, inspired us to reconsider finishing the place off. We had previously looked into Finished Basement Company, who has done quite a few basements in our neighborhood. It's an excellent company who does beautiful work, but is so far out of our budget it's not even funny. Then we found out about Nearly Finished Basement, their sister company who does framing, drywall, electric, and plumbing so you can save money and do the rest yourself. What a great idea! But still out of our budget. We finally settled on what we call The Five Year Plan, where we (Mark) will do everything ourselves (by himself.) He's a rather handy guy so we drew up some rough plans figuring we could chip away at it as we find time and money, hiring out anything we decide we (Mark) can't do ourselves (by himself.) Add this to the growing list of big ideas that I come up with and expect Mark to execute...only this time he's motivated by a real "big boy" media room made to his exact specifications (within our budget). Yes, he's definitely on board!
Back to cleaning out the basement. We both have a little bit of packrat in us, so despite having moved twice since we've been living together (and numerous times each before that) we still had several dozen large boxes full of memorabilia and other junk that's fun to look through but mostly just gets in the way. On one hand, we're lucky that we've had this big basement to store it all away in for 5 years; on the other, hanging onto this much stuff has hindered us from fully enjoying 1/3 of our house because it's so cluttered. It's embarrassing having people downstairs because our junk is pretty much on display ("Nice Simpson's action figure collection..."). I will admit that it's been fun going through our old things, finding treasures and learning more about each other ("I didn't know you took organ lessons as a kid!") Some of the random items we've found include:
- Mark's childhood melodica, trumpet, and a few small keyboards (we plan to start a family band, a la the Partridge Family)
- my wig, a lavender bob, which I occasionally wore to clubs when I used to go out
- every essay and homework assignment Mark ever completed from preschool-college (not even an exaggeration!) and his still-packed Jansport from college
- a list of phone numbers and addresses for all of my friends in 1997 when I moved to Atlanta
- Mark's collection of Pez dispensers
- my pins and patches from the Deca conferences I attended in high school
- every sweatshirt and tshirt Mark has ever owned from adolescence through college (only a slight exaggeration)
- my old nose ring
- some Garbage Pail Kids and baseball cards
In addition to these gems, Mark's parents are also cleaning out their basement...so they brought another box over this weekend. This box contained personal records of Mark's from birth through college, and we had a ball going through it all last night around the kitchen table. Everything from Mark's childhood immunization record (interesting how short the schedule was back then) to his report cards for every semester he's ever been in school. Reading the teacher comments was hilarious! One piece of paper had handwritten notes from his mom regarding his "firsts"...solid food was carrots at 2 months, and his first movie was just a few weeks later. There were, of course, the obligatory bad pictures during the awkward years that everybody goes through - I always get a good laugh at those because he was so adorable. And I imagine what we would have looked like together had we known each other back then...between his humongous glasses and my braces and frizzy hair, we would have made quite the handsome couple! But my favorite item was Mark's college application essay. Why, you ask? Because it was eerily prophetic.
The application asked that students predict what they will be doing in the year 2010 (how fitting for us to run across it now!) Mark's essay mentioned a fictional best friend who had moved to California, and then called to offer him a job there (he does have a good friend who moved to California after graduation, who we've visited a few times.) But the really interesting part was when he wrote about feeling torn over wanting to move to California for a job when he had a wife and 2 year old daughter who loved Minnesota. Shut the front door!!! Funny thing is, I'm usually the one bugging him to move to California. Even so, pretty ironic.
I don't know how this post about the basement turned into a This is Your Life post about Mark...
No comments:
Post a Comment