I fought the mold...

... and the mold won...

Phase two of spring cleaning: put away my winter clothes and haul out my summer clothes which have been hibernating in the basement all winter. Now a wee bit of background here-- our basement has flooding issues... which we only discovered AFTER the fact when we moved in last summer. We had boxes of stuff piled on the floor-- one of those projects we kept meaning to get to, to organize everything neatly in our alloted storage space and get stuff off the floor... Well, these things have a way of getting away from you until its too late, until you are forced to deal with them because you HAVE to, which in this case was after our first torrential rain when we came down to find our mess sitting in four inches of water. We lost some stuff, but managed to get our selves organized finally-- plastic rubbermaid trunks on the bottom, cardboard boxes on top- other miscellaneous items on our shelves. Beautiful. We could rest easy through more storms and more floods knowing that our stuff was safe and sound down in the basement.

HA! Not so my friends...

Yesterday morning, I headed down to the basement, threw a load of laundry in and set about sorting through stuff in search of my summer clothes. I discovered the massive, half full bag of potting soil, I'd "lost" behind a large box on top of our stack of trunks. (woohoo, now to get some plants to plant... perhaps NEXT weekends project) I pull down the boxes and unstack the trunks. Whats in this one? Oh yes, heres my tabla case, an old frame I have big plans for (its like Christmas re-discovering long lost treasures!), that sweater I bought in Boston freshmaa......huh? .... WHATS THATT?? I pick the sweater gingerly pinched between my thumb and forefinger and hold it at arms length. It is covered in what looks like... suds... with a sinking feeling I continue to pull out progressively damper, soggier, smellier, less recognizable pieces of clothing... till I have a pile of grossness on the floor- bright orange and green and white.... and a trunk with a layer or sludge at the bottom. This is where I SHOULD have taken a photo... you'd have been mighty impressed... But I was too busy trying to figure out what on earth to do.

KJ was no help- up to her eyeballs in her own mess of papers and deadlines... Call my mom: "well, try washing it..." Ok... So I fill up the washing machine... though I can't really imagine this stuff is going to just wash away... I come back half an hour later and open up the machine to find what looks like I'd accidently thrown a large, long-haired grey cat in with my clothes. My grey sweater had disintegrated, and everything was fuzzed up with grey wool... and I find myself with yet ANOTHER mess to clean up... *sigh*

So after the fact- I took photos to document this impressive event so I could share on my fabulous blog. Sadly it doesn't really look quite as impressive as I'd hoped (as it WAS)... but I thought someone might find it mildly amusing.

This shirt WAS white...

All thats left of the sweater I got freshman year in Boston....


So long sweet stuff...

PS- it wasn't actually my summer stuff that got ruined. thankgoodness. And I decided if its down in a trunk then I probably don't need to hang onto it anyway. Now I'm on a mission to purge all my unused and unneeded stuff. WOOHOO... Goodwill here I come!