The Pain Cave

To be honest I can't really believe I am sharing our basement transformation with the world. Now I wouldn't say HOARDING is the word to describe our basement...well....perhaps....no no, nothing like hoarding. ;-)

Close.

All of you with little ones out there can relate....you know there is a box that needs to be taken to the basement so you set it by the stairs to take down. When the small window of opportunity arises you make a mad dash for the basement....the 3 year old's 'mommy beacon' is deployed and he instantly starts shouting "MOMMMY, MOMMY, MAMA, MOM, MOMMY". Time is short...toss the box on the floor and run back up the stairs. You see where I'm going with this? Now multiply that by 7 years and two three year olds. I'm not sure of the exact math on that....but it equals BASEMENT DISASTER.

This was the "red room." Don't ask. We don't know why it's red. It creeps me out though. This is where I kept my canning jars, Christmas dec's, and about a billion other things. Two walls are lined with heavy duty shelving (we tried our hand at organization a couple years ago). I'll show those shelves when Christmas is put away.

To begin, I should mention there are four large rooms in our basement, plus a double sized room....so really six large rooms in the basement. This would be great if I had an organization plan from the beginning. Alas I did not....so it was SIX ROOMS OF PURE CHAOS.

And we whipped them all into shape.

Today we'll take a look at the new "pain cave". As I mentioned before, my husband would be of the insane Ironman triathlete variety. Frankly, it just makes me tired to look at him sometimes. Anyhoo....these triathlete types enjoy the pain of training, and therefore like to make up wonderful names like "pain cave" for the place they do said training in. Levi wanted a cave of his very own......so here we go. The photos above show the room packed to the gills.

With this super snazzy paint job. Kinda like Valentine neopolitan ice cream...if ice cream involved peeling paint and creepy red walls.

Paint to the rescue. It took. A.LOT. Concrete block walls painted red and black (yes one of the walls was black.) Satanic? I'll let you decide. Now they're WHITE! Fresh and clean and bright. My dad had so kindly installed a fluorescent light for us some years ago which really helped the ambiance...picture the red/black with one hanging fixture. Can you say "horror movie" with me?

Look at the happy triathlete in his own environment. Indoor bicycle trainer, treadmill, mat for doing endless situps....he's in heaven. And I can breath easier knowing the clutter is GONE!!!