A Recap of our Basement Home Organization Project with Balanced With KT

Last year, I was in a state of pure overwhelm and looking for a way to refocus how our family was operating. We were buried under pandemic purchases and piles of endless laundry. My husband and kiddos were begging daily for a new puppy to join our family and I quite frankly wasn’t ready with the current operating state of our home.

The Problem:

As the primary caretaker of the home, it was important for me to step into devising a plan to help make things run smoother here. We needed systems and organization. And we needed it STAT.

I love home organization gurus like The Home Edit and Marie Kondo and drool over Pinterest boards full of organizing solutions. Take me into the Container Store and forget it! I’m in heaven.

However, even with all I’ve read and all the attempts I’ve made at tackling our home, it still wasn’t working. It was time to call in the experts. Mainly because I just didn’t physically have enough time to dig myself out of all the projects I’d start before the kids got home from school. I need a body double (or 5).

The Solution:

Katie and I met over FaceTime to do a tour of my home and I shared my biggest trouble spots at the time:

1. Laundry
2. Overflowing toys & clutter
3. Lack of systems in the Basement
4. Backstock overflow

We blocked off 2 days to tackle the basement and Katie gathered a team of 4 moms to come help. She had me gather all the toys from every room in the house and bring them all down to the basement so we could gather all the lost pieces and fully assess everything that we had.

The situation got a lot worse looking before it got better. The best part though was that Katie and the team sent me off to go hang out upstairs while they did the initial pull out and match things together into like categories.

Throughout the time, they called me down to go through the items and determine what to Keep, Donate and Toss. It was so liberating to see exactly how much baggage we were carrying around.

Katie’s team took 4 full van/SUV loads of donations and called a guy to haul away an entire garage bay full of trash (3 truckloads full).

By the end of 2 days my basement was fully whipped into shape. And the space it created for my family was remarkable. The first thing my daughter did was run down across the clean floor and tumble/flip over the large blue crash pad. We need that space to breathe, create and play safely!

The basement isn’t always this clean — because kids. But it does clean up within 30 min at its worse! We now have systems and places for all the things and know when it’s time to purge if something doesn’t fit or there isn’t a space for it. The kids have been big helpers when it comes to putting things back.

Lessons Learned:

So let me be honest here. Hiring a team of organizers to come in and do the hard work for you is not cheap. BUT it is something that we didn’t fully understand the value of until we saw how fast and tangible results could happen. I had spent countless hours spinning my wheels in the mud trying to get this project tackled and would never have made the progress we did so fast without help.

The surprising benefits:

1. My stress level instantly went down. Having a system and a plan and a whole heck of a lot less clutter cleared space in my brain and my psyche to handle managing more of the daily tasks of motherhood and business ownership with more peace of mind and ease.
2. Kids are more eager to play with their toys. Now that they can see and find their toys (with all the parts) and have SPACE to play — they’re much more willing and eager to go down and play vs. gravitating toward screen time.
3. More time to play together. Instead of being so cranky – I am more able and willing to play with the kids. I’m still not great at this for long but being in the space when it’s clean and organizing is now a source of joy instead of dread.
4. Educated on how to tackle other projects. Now that I’ve seen the system play out, I am more confident in my process for tackling other areas of the home. I know that every space needs to have a purpose and it’s important to zone different areas for ease of organization and functional use.
5. No Buyers remorse. It could be easy for me to feel like this investment was too big/a waste, but the benefit to our family has been so profound that we’ve shifted our perspective on how & what we choose to invest in. We are more cognizant of what we purchase and bring into our home and realize the compounding benefit of hiring help to do the tasks that we can’t complete without wasting precious time we don’t have. It is like a secret solution for buying back your time!
6. More time to focus on things that light me up. It’s no secret that my brand photography and photo organizing business are 2 projects that fuel me and light me up. Investing in help at home has allowed me more time and space to focus on growing my business and fuels my passion outside of being a wife and mother.

But my most favorite part of the organization project will surprise you…

I laugh that my storage and utility closets are my favorite spots! We used clear plastic shoe boxes with dividers and labels to help manage and sort all of the screws, wall plates, outlets, and misc. tools that my husband frequently collects, leaves around the house and loses / asks me to help find. Now everything lives in one place. Even our left over house paint is organized by room and easy to see. It’s baffling how much this sort of system can create so much ease/joy.

I am truly grateful to have had this experience and to have taken this risk to invest in the functioning of our home.

I’ll share more about some of the other areas of our home that we’ve tackled since and how they’re impacting our family in future posts.

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