What I did during Camp Grandma

Dexter went to Grandma and Grandpa's house last week for 5 days or so.  By himself.  And oh, man, do I ever love Camp Grandma.  I slept til 8AM every day.  When I sleep til 8AM, I have no need for a mid-afternoon nap.  I watched SportCenter.  While eating breakfast.  On the couch.  Buddy and I went for a walk and I didn't have to push a stroller.  I ran errands without having to look at my clock the whole time, seeing when I had to pick a child up from school.  I ate lunch, in a restaurant, by myself, and READ A BOOK.  It was fabulous.

But mostly I spent some time organizing the basement, which was a huge pile of crap that had essentially been thrown down there two years ago when we moved here, and left to become a bigger and bigger pile of crap.  I went through things.  I threw things away.  I filled the recycle bin and John took an extra trip to an off-site recycle place.  I sorted baby clothes.  I filled up the shelves that John built.  I built and filled up two sets of plastic shelves.  John built a set of heavy-duty metal shelves and filled it up with all his stuff.  It is SOOOO much better down there than it was.  Still a work in progress.  We still need more shelves.  I still need to donate some things.  I have 6 boxes of boy clothes that I need to tag, put on hangers, and take to the consignment sale.  After the baby is born and I have physical proof that she really is a girl.  I have a pile of stuff that I still need to decide what to do with.  Horse stuff.  Backpacking stuff.  Camera stuff.  Who wants to buy a nice SLR film camera and lens??

Here's the progress made:

Enormous pile o'crap.  The stuff in the foreground is mostly kid stuff.

Pile of kitchen-related crap

Pile of John's crap, with horse stuff in the back, and more kid stuff.  Too much kid stuff.

Empty home-made shelves waiting to be filled up

Baby clothes sorting - in to keep, sell, donate.  I have a surprising amount of clothing in the 0 - 12 month age range that will work for the baby girl.  Either A) Dexter wore a lot of gender neutral clothing as a baby or B) I just don't give a damn if this baby wears blue.  I mean, seriously.  She can wear blue PJ's.  I'm pretty sure it won't kill her.

Almost full (they are now quite full) shelves

Kitchen crap on a shelf

John's crap

I haven't taken a picture of the entire basement because, honestly, it's embarrassing how much crap we STILL have, sitting out or sitting in boxes in the middle of the floor.  It's way way better than it was.  And John is promising to build more shelves (especially after he was searching for some toy Dex wanted the other day and opened the closet in the blue room and was almost buried by the cascade of toys that fell out.  Yeah.  I kind need to empty that closet out for the baby.  And stuff).  So when it's done, done, really done I'll take a picture.  Right now just trust me.  You can drive a plasma car down there for a pretty long ways without running in to a box.