Basement shelves

 

                My friend Mark says, in total seriousness, that he moves piles for a living. The idea resonates with me. His piles are big, mostly wood and lumber for work, while mine are smaller—books and papers—but they are rooted in the same trees. And, as winter comes in, I move more piles. Winter stores and outdoor furniture need homes inside out of the rains; our books and laundry both hang out inside rather than out; food precessing tools that lived on the edges all summer need to return to their homes on shelves. Meanwhile, books, leaves, and cats pile up inside.  Ours is not a minimalist, pure white house.  Everything has its place, but it  requires constant pile moving to keep it there.  I have spent years building shelves. Even now, I eye a blank wall, especially in the basement, hopefully. Can I lift up a long board and stack something there, out of the winter flood zone?

                My favorite little shelves hang out half way down the basement stairs. I got the idea from a friend who removed the sheetrock from a wall and built little shelves between the studs to hold his canned roasted tomatoes, all neatly packed in half pint jars.  I don’t want to take plaster off of our walls, but, after we transformed the garage into the dining room, there were exposed studs on the stair side.  One afternoon, I built a bunch of little shelves and filled them with the useful debris of living—cleaning supplies, sidewalk chalk, water bottles, and trash bags. A few days later, I returned to the project on the other wall and added shelves for candle holders and vases, along with a very sturdy bench that I found by the side of the road as a step to the highest shelf. Some hooks for rags and candle wax scraps, and we were good to go. A cleaning station worthy of Martha Stewart!

A few years later, we thought it would be good to bring Mark’s college graduation present into a more useful spot, so we built another series of shelves at the top of the stairs. He used some slats from a futon frame (also found by the side of the road) to create the floor and let them project out over the stairwell. When his father was here that summer, they wired a plug for the microwave and our toaster oven, so that we could pop out of the kitchen door and heat up our lunch or tea.  We hung all of our canvas grocery bags off of the extensions.  I keep several potholders right by the oven and a couple of gnarly old towels that we use to clean up floor spills below them.  On the other wall, I used the metal shelving system with brackets to hold the extra serving bowls and water pitchers, as well as my bean pot and big pasta pot. Underneath are the three bags that hold plastic and recycling.

The back hall is probably full—even a little tight at times. But, because everything is right there, it’s not a big deal to move it back to its rightful place (even if it migrates out again the next day).