No sleeve of Girl Scout Thin Mint cookies & and a movie for me this week. Not only did I not achieve my goal of going through the few large plastic bins of my stuff that are sitting in the basement, I didn’t sort through even one of them!

I was all prepared to claim that having a house guest this week is the reason I didn’t check of this task this week, but that simply wouldn’t be true. My friend left every morning to spend the day with her father in the nursing home, leaving me with plenty of time to go through those bins. My knee (more on that later) also wasn’t so bad that I couldn’t make a few trips up and down the stairs. I simply didn’t do it.

The real reason is that I absolutely hate spending time — or at least, more time than it takes to either load the washer or unload it and hang the clothes that need to be placed on hangers. This dislike of basements began when I was a small child and we only went into the basement on two occasions. The first was when the weather was too rainy or too cold/snowy to play outside for any real length of time. When those dreary days arrived, my sister and I (or a friend, if I was lucky) went down to the basement to play with our “inside toys”. Inside toys consisted of anything we had almost outgrown but still played with in a pinch or anything we didn’t normally play with outside — board games, Lincoln Logs, etc. Inside toys and basement days will forever be associated with rainy or bitterly-cold days.

I should explain about “inside toys” for those who may be younger than I am. Back when I was small, we played outside most of the time. We rode bikes, played kickball or hopscotch or Red Rover or some other game, or invented things, or played with Barbies (which we stored in our closets), or simply did any of the variety of things kids our age did back in those days. 

Now, if that had been my only basement experience as a child, I might not hate spending time in the basement now. It’s most likely the other occasion that found us heading to the basement that caused my basement-avoidance tendencies. Once we moved to Southeast Missouri when I was in early elementary school, our basement also became the place we retreated to when it appeared we were in store for heavy storms or (in rare instances, a tornado). At the first hint of severe storms, my mom herded my sister and I down the stairs to the basement. Instead of simply letting us play, though, she’d suddenly notice the mess we’d left the last time it had rained or been too cold to go out, and we’d spend the next hour or more “cleaning the basement”.

I just didn’t see the point of picking up an area we hardly ever used — and only then to play with the very toys were sorted and placed in a few large cardboard boxes set around for that reason. Ironically, my mother didn’t mind clutter upstairs, and I can’t stand clutter in the rooms I normally live in.

So between the nasty weather and the cleaning detail, I learned quickly that the basement was not my kind of place. As a result, I absolutely detest the idea of spending any part of a beautiful, sunny day in the basement. To be completely honest, though, I wouldn’t to tackle this chore on a rainy or snowy afternoon, either — those are reserved for pajamas, a good book or two, possibly a favorite movie, and a bowl of popcorn!

The solution is quite simple. All I need to do is bring the 3-4 bins upstairs one morning and sort through them in the family room. And I could — and should — have done that last week. I just didn’t.

So . . . my “5 Trunks and a Tote” goal this week is to bring up the bins and sort through them.

Evidently, the “stick” of having to confess my not completing the task here isn’t as big a deterrent as I’d hoped, because it didn’t really bother me to confess my failure. 🙂    Likewise, my carrot — a sleeve of Thin Mint cookies and a movie — weren’t enough incentive. So this week I’m simply determined to get it done, without the carrot or the stick.

I’ll let you know how that turns out. 🙂

I just realized that I didn’t explain the part of the title about my stubbed toe. My father had a saying that he’d toss out when we played cribbage and was dealt a hand in which he was unable to move his peg forward at all or perhaps just a few spaces. On those times when he didn’t make any progress, he’d inevitably say cheerfully, “Well, I stubbed my toe that hand.”  So that one’s for you, daddy!