Moving soon to a different home: my wife is pretty much wheelchair bound and life for her has been difficult in our rambler. Rather than put 50K into it, we have just purchased a fully accessible house 5 blocks away and will close on it in 5 weeks. My problem: basement has a 15x28 family room. I can’t have it. basement has a 14x16 spare bedroom. I can’t have it. Basement has a large laundry/utility room: I can get a small corner for workbench, maybe. Basement ha a 15x15 amusement room with large horseshoe wet bar: I have a slim chance of getting it but at the price of removing or building over the bar. Is it worth it?
The bright spot is a 32x36 heated garage, and I get the far stall for my wood shop, but I’ll need to partition it to confine sawdust, etc. Layout won’t go there because of temp. extremes in Minnesota and sawdust and dirt factor.
We’ve both been packrats all our lives (except that everything I save is of value, naturally) and she seems reluctant to thin her stuff out. I’m concerned that we won’t fit into 2500 sqft, and it’s just the two of us!
Any advice on a good negotiating path, devious or otherwise, would be appreciated. I can’t just grab, because a wheelchair lift gives her full access to the basement (sigh). Gary
Nigel: I wish it would work that way in the real world; it’a left-brain/right-brain thing. Every time I thin out, she seems to buy more to take over the space. Gary
My mother is a pack rat, my father is not. Their home has 5 bedrooms and she had three packed to the ceiling along with every closet in the house with all the stuff she’s collected from all over the world. It wasn’t until relatives, who had fallen on hard times, needed a place to stay for a while. Add to that, hurricane Rita hit and my cat and I we’re forced to leave my trailer, which was damaged in the storm by winds better than 100 mph. Part of the roof was torn off and with power out the interior temps were hitting better than 110 degrees, so my parents had to clean out a room for me to stay in. My mother decided then and there that it was time to sort everything down to one room. The rubbish pile out back of the house was burning for four days, as all the stuff she decided that she no longer needed was piled upon it. With the roads impassible by floods, fallen trees and storm debris there was nothing else to do with it. My father decided that while we were at it, we would clean out the attic too. In the end, the stuff she decided to hang onto takes up half of the smallest bedroom and 3/4’s of the closets are empty and they now have three guest rooms. In this case, it was my mother’s decision that the stuff had to go. My father thinks that his constant badgering over the years had something to do with it also. I forgot to mention that their house is 4,825 square feet.
Jeffrey: Thanks for your response; unfortunately not many hurricanes here in the Twin Cities suburbs, but maybe a tornado?? With two worn out knees, fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome, inoperable torn rotator cuff with arthritis, and degenerative discogenic spinal disease, she can’t physically do much, but she can remember EVERYTHING she has, and believes she will have a use for all of it eventually. I’m supposed to build more closet space for clothes which take up 40+’ of rod in our current home (I use about 5’). 150 sqft of shelves in our utility room is full of boxed and unboxed treasures, and furniture in the rest of the house precludes walking more than 6 ft in a straight line.
Probably the solution will be to make heavy use of the wet bar for one weekend, and then take it out? Gary
That sounds like your best bet. That way, you’ll have that room to work with. I had to make the same kind of decision concerning my computer desk when I wanted to expand my layout. The desk went to the burn pile. The computer now resides beneath the layout. I built a special stand that holds the monitor at a forty degree angle so I can see it.
Unfortunately, pack ratting is a serious mental condition that’s not easy to cure someone of. So long as the house doesn’t become a dumpster, it’s usually a good idea to leave well enough alone. Of course, there is a lot of peace of mind that goes along with an uncluttered house!
You mentioned that you need to build a lot of closet space in your new home, and that you have a lot of basement room that is “off limits”. Is there a way to compromise? That 15x28 space sounds ideal for a narrow-ish shelf layout. Is there any way you could agree to build a 2’ wide, LOW closet (48"-56" high max) around the entire periphery of the room, and then gain “air rights” over it? It seems like a win-win for the both of you: she gets almost 100 linear feet of storage, and you get 200 square feet of new layout space. The center of the room would still be available for normal use.
I’m currently working on a similar idea for my own basement. With a 25x25 main space in my basement and a growing family, there’s no way I could justify using all of that space just for myself. My plan is to add a narrow double-deck layout around the walls, at 48" and 60". My shelves will mostly be 1 foot wide (two at towns), and all of the floorspace will be dedicated as a family “rumpus room”. I’ll eventially build bookshelves, entertainment centers and storage under most of the layout for the kids to keep their stuff in.
Ray, you may have hit on something. I did mention to her last night that she might consider a few 3ft long rolling racks similar to clothing store displays. They could be numbered (if she inventories everything), and then I could just bring up whichever one(s) she needs on a particular day. She might be receptive to this. That way I could also roll them out to do underside work in any area. That leaves only two more needs: 1)getting one end wall for an L-shape with loop, and 2)space for a loop at the other end of the long wall. Maybe TV etc. under that part? Gary
Gary, I had to build my laout in the garage but I had to come up with a storage solution. Mine is a bit crude and unfinished but I built roll away shelves to store under the layout. They will not be seen once I put in some drapes from the facia to the floor. I will also buy a shed to house the seasonal decorations one day as for now they are in the rafters above the layout.
I like this idea and I could have built nicer and deaper boxes but its in an unfinished garage.
Another nice thing about it is you may be able to have the center of the room open for her to come down and be comfortable in the space.
I had this same problem with my mother. She had a bunch of useless crap she dragged around for years and never even looked at. I got tired of moving it from house to house to house. It came down to-If you haven’t used it or looked at it in the last year, it gets pitched. She got over it. I’m sure your wife will too. Some times you just have to draw a line in the sand.
Remember-Things DO get lost and broken in the moving process.[;)][:-^]
If reorganizing the “stuff” isn’t going to resolve a whole lot, you know, packing it differently, building racks in one end of the garage, whatever, then the only way to free up space that you would enjoy using for something you consider important is to either erect a small shed or metal garden shed package from the hardware stores, or rent storage cubicles at the facilities that cater to that need.
If there is one way to have it pounded into the brain that all you are doing is hoarding, it will be when paying monthly invoices, or worse, a whole year’s worth of space rental, for stuff that never sees the light of day. Take every opportunity to make that point with a courteously warmed knife. [:-,] Ask her what she could get for it over a month of day-long garage sales, and then add up all the bills. Hmmm…
You have to live with someone, in the end, but they have to live with you, too. It goes both ways. At some point, you must assert yourself and make it clear that this is so important to you that you are going to start escalating your stance. If that is what it takes for her to relent enough for you to get a chunk of the available space that you can be happy, then what else should you do?