We’re cleaning out our basement (again) in hopes of better organizing our supplies. Running a store involves a lot of stuff like clothes racks, shipping bags and boxes, pegs, tools, slat wall, and a boatload of those blaze orange bags you see walking up and down Main Street. Previously we organized our basement using the Pile Method. There were piles of fixtures, piles of fabric, piles of mannequins, piles of boxes. There were even piles of piles.

You see we’ve been in this building a long time- from way back in the Partyrama days- so we’ve accumulated years of, well, crap. All of it is arguably useful- we might need a full-size decorative King Tut sarcophagus someday- but we’ve decided to let a little of it go.

Here’s a brief list of what we’ve discovered in our excavation:

1 hat tree

2 Santa’s helper suits

1 antique sewing machine

3 packs of fake blood

1 King Tut

assorted boxes of ribbon

1 bag of styrofoam heads

732 boxes of pegs

1 box of squiggly pom-pom material in neon pink

1 christmas tree woman- yes, a christmas tree in the shape of a woman

2 cookie jars

1 crock pot

2 space heaters

1 box of tiaras

1 puke-yellow phone

3 instructional videos for theatrical makeup

4 hairy spiders

1 porthole to another dimension

and Jimmy Hoffa.

So you see we can’t possibly have skeletons in our closets- there hasn’t been any room!  We’re actually overwhelmed by the newly found free space (and the YMCA will soon be overwhelmed with a truckload of weirdo stuff), so we’re tossing around ideas as to what to use it for. Of course “bar” was blurted out first. Followed by “ball pit” and “bowling alley”. I’m voting for showers and bunk beds. I think it would make game weekends easier if we just slept downstairs.

With the start of a new year and the lingering lackluster economy, we encourage you to clean out your basement and closets. Find a new use for that old junk, have an epic yard sale, or donate to someone in need. It’s liberating, thrifty, and green.

Unless you find fake blood. Then it’s more red.