All I wanted for Christmas was for some elves to clean out my basement so I could set up a darkroom. When that didn’t happen (lazy f***ing elves), I came to the realization that I could actually have my darkroom without benefit of dark or room. With a changing bag, I could unroll the film anywhere, and if I scanned my negatives instead of printing them, I didn’t even need a permanent space. I could set up a temporary developing station in my kitchen! So I ran out to a photo supply store and, with various Christmas gift cards, bought everything I needed to develop film and then produce digital images from it.

(Husband: “I don’t understand. Couldn’t you accomplish the same thing with this digital camera?”)

So to prepare for developing my first roll, I did some reading: “Toxic chemicals blah blah blah…allergic reactions blah blah blah…small children…spills…ventilation blah blah blah….contamination of food…” and I eventually deduced that the kitchen was not going to be the best place for my darkroom, if for no other reason than it is continuously occupied from 6:00 a.m. until midnight each day.

So I cleaned the basement.

After three hours of separating, bagging, organizing, etc. I decided the best course of action would be to make one room of the basement the trash room and organize the stuff I was keeping in two of the other rooms, clearing out the fourth room for the darkroom. Six hours later, the fruits of my labors were thus. Here is the (no exaggeration) small mountain of trash in the trash room.

The depth is hard to perceive in this photo, but the room is about 10 feet from the door, where I took the photo, to the enormous water pump (for a sprinkler system, no longer in use). I am almost physically ill when I think of the waste inherent in this pile. Clothes that are sort of good but not really, books that would be desirable if not destroyed from years of storage in poor conditions, curtains from old houses that don’t fit the current windows, pieces of toys….CRAP. CLUTTER. I will try to do better in 2008.

But along with the trash, there were some treasures.

Our fourth kitchen chair! We were wondering what happened to it.

A metal pencil sharpener, one of two permanently installed in the house. The previous owners obviously valued sharp pencil points. Aitch is fascinated with them. Eight computers in the house, and he’s entranced by the pencil sharpener.

Wall ‘O Nails! A different nail for every occasion! Check out the vintage coffee cans.

And…one painfully groovy rug.

Hey! Wanna come over to my basement and listen to records and read “Tiger Beat”?

Contrast this scene with the view pre-cleanup to see what nine hours of work looks like.

I’ll post my first photos when I have them.