The Basement

Everyone wants to grow up and have a house with a basement. We want to be able to store that small million of Christmas ornaments we eventually plan on passing on to our darling children; to keep our childhood toys which our children love to sneer at as horridly dull; to keep that ugly furniture we can't seem to part with; to have a place to toss bored children on rainy days; to keep the food we may need for the large meteorite heading towards earth... I could go on. There are huge reasons for all of us to have a basement, but in general I would think that storage and a place to put the furnace and hot water heater (at least here in the northern areas. I know they aren't as popular in all places).

So you have your large lovely storage area to keep all those things which we assume are going to be useful but never really are. The thing is, one really needs to be selective about what one stores.

Here are good things to store:

• extra canned goods and other extra large quantities of food for your next party
• holiday decorations that you love
• suitcases for all your many travel needs
• books you read again and again
• baby clothes for those children you could eventually have
• items for work you may eventually need

Things NOT to store:

• audio tapes for a stereo that is so obsolete that it runs on coal
• film reels that are unlabeled and can only be played on a projector that you would have to borrow from the Smithsonian
• furniture with odd shapes and sizes and special holes added by visiting rodents
• books you never read or have twelve copies of
• unused electrical appliances or broken appliances
• computers or computer parts that are older than a decade or need a hard drive the size of a room to operate
  
• any food that is beginning to ferment in its packaging
• any item gnawed on or peed on or used by rodents or insects

I could go on, but I will spare all of you. I am hoping that you have common sense.

Why do I write about these things? Consider it a polite word of caution against the mess I encounter far too often. I shall leave the location nameless, but if you need any of those things you shouldn't store - let me know. Between that and the thousands of dollars of tupperware and I might some day be sane.

Really.