Gerine de Jong's Blog

Never in my life had I seen a basement work so hard for a home-owner. It sported a pool table, a wall unit, comfy sofa and chairs, half a dozen garment racks filled with half a dozen decades of favoured garments, a wine cellar, a tool room, an office, a pantry, overflow storage for shoes, grandmother's dishes, paper files, office supplies, photo albums, family archives, supplies to do with entertaining, gardening, gift-wrapping, flower-arranging, photo-framing, and of course, seasonal decorations.

One of the best moments of any downsizing project is the moment when the floor plan falls into place: a well-loved table finds a spot, a favourite chair, a useful chest of drawers. A good floor plan will allow one's life to continue on smoothly, in its different dimensions.

During the holidays I decided to tackle the toys lurking underneath my middle son's bed, deciding, first and foremost, that bins under beds should have lids: no one wants to play with a dusty toy. There I found a bin containing hundreds of small stones, each one unique, hand-picked by one of my sons on one or another warm summer day.