"Final" Before and After Pictures of My Basement Decluttering Project

I had posted earlier this week about my progress on my basement. Now my basement certainly was not nearly horrendous. I've seen way worse basements and I've seen better. It was (in my opinion) just a pretty standard overcrowded, things got dumped here/there/willy nilly kind of basement. However, this organizing project has been hanging over my head since we moved in 10 ish years ago and I was in the mood to GET 'ER DONE!!! So I set February 2011 as the month it would happen and it DID!!!

Here are final pictures showing a complete walkaround of the basement. I still need to do some more work on my craft shelves, but that will be minor. My basement is basically ushaped - with the stairs dumping you off facing west and you walk around in a half circle with the hot water heater / furnace in the middle of the room beneath the stairs.

As you come down the stairs and take a sharp 90 degree turn for the last three steps, this was the view straight ahead.

Now, it looks like this. :)

If you turn towards the right about 90 degrees, here's what it used to look like:

Here's what it looks like now...

One more 90 degree turn to the right and this is what it looked like:

The after is SOOO much better, isn't it?

Here's the facing view of those shelves on the left before:

And, finally, turn around to see the back corner before (which was pretty open to start with).

And the after, with storage shelves added in.

Next up: I will be doing some super frugal decorating just to try to make the place look a little more homey (heavily inspired by thriftydecorchick's basement redo), including a big exercise mat and an area rug under my craft area. I'll take more pictures when I make some significant progress on the decorating side, but that may be a while, as I have other items on the 2011 Get 'er Done! List that I am working on.

Hubby wants to set up a table and chairs to play Dungeons & Dragons (why, yes, yes, I am married to a geek, how did you know?) with his buddies downstairs.

Eventually we want to finish our basement, but for now, I'm just thrilled to make it more usable.

I posted this on the Elements Interiors: Link Party!