Summertime, The Livin’ is Easy, until you tackle that project.

We’ve crossed summer’s midway point. Fun, fireworks, pool, grill, shorts, swimsuits and flip flops. We’ve all been partaking of summer’s great perks. Life circumstances lately got me to thinking about tackling some projects around the home. Summer often affords the time to do such things.

The dreaded crawlspace just to the right of our basement has been accumulating from a molehill to a mountain for the sum total of 12 years. Since moving in to my home in 1994 I’ve basically just ‘thrown’ stuff in there. That’s a lot of throwing. 12 Christmas’s, birthdays for the boys and a veritable accumulation of all things not used daily just getting shoved into a space about 12 feet long, 6 feet wide and 4 four feet tall. It’s gotten so bad that every year there are three occasions when I go in this space which is like trekking into a haunted house from my perspective. Halloween, then Christmas and Easter are when I go in and retrieve the ritualistic decorations and related items for inside and outside display. Most people dread putting up decorations, in and out. I dread just getting them out.

Backbreaking, aggravating and down right maddening is just three of the feelings going on in my head at one time when these occasions arise. You have to be some kind of clairvoyant contortionist to extract the stuff from my crawl space. Well, on Saturday July 15th at around 11am, just shy of a real world class thunderstorm, the boys and I decided ‘where going in’ and we’re going to ‘get er done’. I didn’t care if it took me all day or several days but I’ve had enough. So I began my quest. I started by clearing a path which was made slightly easier by a recent June yard sale in my community. Thank goodness for that because I would have had to remove items just to get myself in to the crawl space.

Whose idea was the crawl space anyway? I get the added storage thing, but the fact that you can only operate in the area hunched over or laying flat on your back or stomach is completely lost on me. Either builders thought people who owned homes would grow no larger than 4 feet tall or they were just figuring we’d figure it out, not caring how back breaking these areas actually are to operate within.

Back to my tale of woe. I worked up a plan that had me starting in one corner and careening the back wall of the crawl space to work in a square mentality to see what’s behind all the stuff that was familiar sticking out in front. Over the years I tried to put the things I needed more often in front to limit the time and trouble of getting to semi-annual and annual items. What a discovery, things from college days, old items from my office and a mountain of infant toys and toddler items enough to fill the back corner of a nearby box store. Here’s the worst part, two thirds of what was in my crawl space were empty Christmas and gift boxes. More space these ‘empties’ took up, you can’t imagine. So off to the trash heap these went.

Now after a few hours the light of the work the boys and I did started taking shape. Next we inventoried what belonged in what spot. There is now a space for Christmas decorations
( all of them ), same for Halloween and Easter. Before we started the daunting project these were scattered in about 16 areas across this pit. My affectionate name for the crawl space is ‘the pit’.

Old gifts not used have a space along with some sentimental items that while never displayed or used again it’s tough to part with. The ultimate separation anxiety is when you have an item you neither need or use but can’t do without. Figure that one out. When finished the crawl space or pit, is now organized, inventoried and clear for human safety to trek about to retrieve and store items. How long will it stay this way? Lord only knows but rest assured if the thought crosses my mind that I have to do this project again if we recklessly regard what we’ve accomplished I predict I’ve learned my lesson.

Walk on the wild side, or crawl, or lie or stumble, but get into that small space called the crawl space and find out how much you have to learn about the way you and your family have been living. Just make sure you have an appointment with a good chiropractor when you’re through. Enjoy your summer and summer projects.

See ‘ya around town.