Taking Stock

Walker and I moved into this house five years ago this month. At first, the house was a mess. It was a single owner home that had been unoccupied for months after the original owner went into a nursing home. She had raised her family here; they owned the home for fifty years. While the house was structurally sound, everything needed updating.
So we updated. We cleaned and painted and pulled up carpets. Curtains, light fixtures, and orange bath fixtures went out with the trash. One room at a time, we spent every free hour putting the house together. I wouldn't say we finished, I'd say we stopped. We ran out of steam about the time we ran out of money. Most everything got done, though there are odd projects here and there that are incomplete. The important things are done, and I doubt the previous owners would recognize the inside of the house. The biggest holdover is the pile of "leftovers" in the basement.
The past few days have been tough. I can't really do much, but I have all day to lay around looking at it. The basement has a family room area, a storage area, and laundry room. As we remodeled the upstairs, all the "leftovers" made their way down to the laundry and storage rooms. Now we have full shelves as well as a stack of boxes of odds and ends that need to be sorted, purged, and disposed of.
I can't do any of it.
It's bugging me.
A lot.
Walker and I are so busy in our "normal" lives it's easy to ignore the junk. With all this time on my hands, it's so hard to just keep ignoring it. Don't get me wrong: it's not a disaster area. As we finished each room the paint cans, unused art and knick knacks, etc, were put onto the shelves in no particular order. The extra furniture was lined up against the wall in the laundry room. The materials for finishing the basement have their space, too: new light fixtures, tiles for the bar, boxes of shelving and photo frames....we can't just finish the basement because that would increase our property taxes above what we are willing to pay in this crappy economy.
So as I lay here in Walker's big easy chair, I mentally plan my attack. When I'm feeling better, when I can use my arm again, when I am allowed to lift, here's what goes, here's what stays. This is how it will be organized, here's who will take the donations. It's all in my head. One day, hopefully soon, it will be out of my head and into reality. Soon. When I am better.