It’s spring. SPRING! SPRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIING. Sweet mercy, I love spring. I don’t care that we still have snow on the ground and it’s 35 degrees the minute the sun sets. I do care that the birds are tweeting away outside of my bedroom window and it’s warm enough that Kyle is back to parking in the driveway instead of in the garage. For the past two weeks, I have pulled my own car smack into the middle of our two garage spots, walked out into my front yard, and fist-pumped over and over and over again up to the sky because GOLLY GEE AND LORDY BE, YES! IT IS SPRING.
I was particularly lazy this winter – the number of times I said “I would if I wasn’t already hibernating” when I thought about doing something was a lot – and so the return of spring has sprung me out of my proverbial cave…and back down into my literal cave.
“I am going to clean the basement,” I told Kyle.
Kyle, who was rightfully wary since history has shown that my “I” action statements usually mean “we,” didn’t respond.
“I can do it by myself,” I continued. “And I’m not going to do it all at once. I’m going to pick away for a couple of hours every day until I get it done.”
“Okay,” Kyle said.
“Starting tomorrow,” I said.
“Okay,” Kyle said.
Bright and early the next morning, Kyle was in the backyard taking down the hockey rink.
“I’m going to clean a bit of the basement today,” I shouted at him from the kitchen window.
“Okay,” Kyle yelled back. “I’m pretty busy doing this.”
“That’s fine because I’m having the boys help me,” I shouted back.
Kyle gave me a thumbs-up.
Our basement belongs to our boys. Sure, there’s a guest room, storage room, and a workout room – but those are just ancillary spaces to the basement’s overall purpose, which is Play. The Play portion of the basement consists of two family rooms (technically one big family room with an archway in the middle) and a walk-in toy closet. When we first moved into our house, I neatly organized the toys and toy-related activities into zones using furniture and art and bins and beanbag chairs and mom-ness throughout the family rooms and the closet. Every night after the boys were asleep, I would put away un-put-away items and redistribute any of the put-away-but-put-away-in-the-wrong spot items back into their appropriate zones. When they received new toys, I would locate those within their proper zones and clean out any items that were broken or no longer used. That lasted for about six months. After those six months, I decided to let that basement go with God.
For the last few years, I’ve gone in the basement only when absolutely necessary – to make the guest bed, to work out (ha ha), or to look for cups, glasses, and bowls that “were DEFINITELY not down there, Mom, DEFINITELY.” Every time, I’d shut my eyes and feel around for the bowl or the sauna and go back upstairs and pretend like that experience had never happened. Wouldn’t you know it, though, somewhere around Thanksgiving I peeked long enough to realize we had a Wall-E-type situation manifesting throughout every single room in the basement and something had to be done. Then I thought about that something for four months until spring sprung and the time was nigh.
I decided to start with the costumes. You’ll be unsurprised to hear that we (although my fourteen-year-old will claim ownership of none) own a lot of costumes. Those costumes are kept in a giant grey rubber tub on wheels. At some point, someone (me) got sick and tired of that giant gray rubber tub existing on Mount Toy and rolled it into the storage room. Instead of rolling it back out when they wanted to use it and then rolling it back in when they were finished, the boys – again, Fourteen, who will tell you he has never used any of the costumes in spite of the many, many, many Nest videos of he and his friends wearing ghillie suits and dinosaur masks and ninja outfits playing Ghost in the Graveyard in the yard – just pulled open the bin, tossed the lid into another part of the storage room, took what they wanted, and then tossed the costumes back into the general vicinity of the bin when they were finished.
“Ten,” I told Ten, “You are going to help me sort costumes.”
“Fourteen needs to help you!” Ten yelled. “I never wear them!”
“You’re wearing one right now,” I said to Ten, who was wearing a Beetlejuice costume. “Besides, Fourteen is going to help me with other stuff.”
“Ugh, fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine,” he said.
We pulled the costume bin out of the storage room, and then we pulled the costumes that were not in the bin and instead strewn about the storage room out of the storage room. In doing so, and because there were so many costumes hiding in nooks and crannies, we inadvertently cleaned up and organized the storage room. That took an hour.
It took another hour to sort the costumes into three piles – keep, throw away, give away – because Ten felt the need to try on every single costume he touched. In the end, Ten, who was by then wearing a banana suit and hat, ninja gloves, a pirate eye patch, and Beetlejuice pants, filled two garbage bags with donor items and filled a third bag with garbage and took them upstairs.
“That was very good,” I told myself. “I can pat myself on the back and consider that a successful day and come back tomorrow and do something else.”
Except that I didn’t come back the next day. Well, I did, but I also spent another six hours in the basement that same day because Fourteen made the mistake of entering my eye line as I was patting myself on the back and I felt the desire to put him and his big muscles to good use. Together, we cleaned out and packed up bins and bins of trains, Playmobile sets, LEGOs (my GOSH, the LEGOs; if there is ever a shortage of LEGOs in this universe, the Kosiors have everyone covered), and the like. By the time we finished, the basement looked worse.
“I’m going to finish the basement tomorrow,” I told Kyle that night.
“I thought you were doing a little bit each day?” He said.
“I tried,” I said. “Except that every time we sorted something we found something else that needed to be sorted and I set that on the floor and now you can’t walk on the carpet. Also, I dumped a bunch of stuff in the workout room so it would be out of the way and when I pulled it back out I found a bunch more stuff in there and so we cleaned that room up by accident and that took more time than I expected.”
“Okay,” Kyle said. “I’m still working on the rink.”
The boys and I worked on the basement the whole of the next day. Fourteen’s friends made the mistake of showing up after lunch and so I put their big muscles to use moving furniture. Ten’s friends made the mistake of showing up after that and so I put their budding muscles to use taking out the garbage. We finished at 4:30 PM, which was the right amount of time for me to take a shower, make dinner, and bask in the glow of the newly-organized basement for five minutes before Ten drove us all for ice cream to celebrate a job well done.
“That was a very successful weekend,” I told Kyle as he rubbed my back, sore from action after being inert for so many months.
“Yes, you were busy,” he said.
“Yes, and we got finished in two days instead of two months so now I have time to do more work,” I said. “Maybe I’ll paint the bathroom.”
“Okay,” Kyle said, sighing.
Yay, spring!
In case you thought I was joking about Ten, the photo above is proof of the banana costume (and the Beetlejuice pants, although you can’t see them).
(PS – Happy Passover, everyone!)
This week on North Dakota Today, we talked about the North Dakota Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, as well as Chris Clawson, my Nice Person of the Week. (Valley News Live)
Rolette County’s Alex Henry is the latest recipient of the “Stork Award.” (KFYR TV)
Operators are now standing by for the grand opening of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library. (Grand Forks Herald)
The Bismarck Bytebots are taking their robots to Houston. (KFYR TV)
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