DISASTER BASEMENT! Organizing my stockpile and getting this basement cleaned up

Hello, hello, hello, OMG. Welcome back to my channel. So excited you are here. Thank you so much for clicking on this video. It's Jodi Dunn. We're headed down into my basement today. I have a huge organization project coming at you today and my basement is a disaster. We have been in the back part of my basement, the unfinished part, doing a big declutter and organization in there. We are now in the finished part of my basement and we are going to tackle half of this today. So when you walk down my stairs to the right, this is what we are looking at. This is where I house my couponing stockpile. I am an extreme couponer and this has just gotten totally out of control down here. Funny enough, before I started going through room by room, drawer by drawer in my house and decluttering my house, my stockpile area was the one area that I kept pretty organized and neat. And you can see that has really gone by the wayside and it is a complete disaster down here. But we are gonna tackle it today and make it look amazing again. If you are new and you just found me, I am so excited that you are here. Would you please say hello to me and let me know that you are new right down in the comments. I would love to welcome you to the channel and say hello back to you. And if you are already subscribed, thank you so much for coming back to another video. I sure do appreciate you. So I'm just giving you an overview of how everything looks right now. And we got to run to Home Depot to be able to do part of this project. It's just gonna feel so good once this is done. All right, so made my quick run to Home Depot and holy moly, I'm just looking for a little bit of plywood here. The prices have skyrocketed. I'm sure y'all are aware the prices on everything have gone up, but I need the stuff. So this is what I'm grabbing today so that we can work on this basement organizational project of my stockpile area. And I'm just bringing all the plywood downstairs now. And so nice of the hubs, he helped me a little bit. I put on some gloves just because I didn't want to get a possible splinter, but he just used his spare hands. So there you go. We got all the plywood downstairs now. All right, so as I told you, to the right is where I house a majority of my couponing stockpile. When you come down the stairs to the left is more of like a living area. We're not even gonna touch that today. We're only working on the stockpile area. And I bought these shelving systems like two years ago and they said they held 400 pounds per shelf. It's particle board down there. The whole things on any shelves, the shelves, not the whole things, the shelves on any shelves that I have heavy stuff on are totally bowing, making it really hard to use the shelving because things are falling over. And so that's why I went and got the plywood, hoping I could kind of reinforce these as a quick fix to get my stockpile organized. So you can see how much these shelves have bowed. And so super happy I got the plywood to take care of this. And just hoping that each piece fits. I've got two by twos. I could have got a four by two, but I have kind of a smaller vehicle and I was afraid that the four by twos would not fit in there. And my husband said, get two by twos, they'll be easier. And these two fit perfectly. Oh, I was so, so happy. So if you've ever seen the show Extreme Couponers or Couponing on TLC, that's not what Couponing is actually really like in real life. Anytime they have shows like that on TV, they're highly dramatized. They're showing things that don't actually work in real life or that I could not go into the store and do. And I'm so bummed because this piece, the shelf up there, they were fitting just fine. This one is not fitting. I don't know if I got like one of these is cut a little bit bigger, but I have absolutely no tools in my house at this point. I'm hoping to start building up a little bit of tools that I can use for different projects that could cut this. So I have to figure that one out. So I grabbed another piece to see if it was just that one piece and it was, this one did fit perfectly. So Couponing nowadays is a lot easier than even what they make it look like on that show Extreme Couponers because there are so many stores that give you just digital coupons. So you don't even need to have like the paper insert coupons that you see on that show where they're clipping all of those coupons and using 15 of the same coupons and all of that fun stuff like that does not work in real life and you could not do that in real life. So I have been a couponer for a long time and there have been times that I have taken breaks from couponing, but it's just something that I have such a passion for and I love, love doing it so much. And so I've always come back to it and I do have a channel. I'll link it down below. It's always linked in the description box where basically I teach people how to coupon and just save a ton of money for their household. So everything that you're gonna see in this room are things that I have couponed for and got most of them for totally free. And it is such a blessing because I supply of course my household with all of our household needs. I supply my daughter's household, like she hasn't bought detergent in forever. My father-in-law, my mother, like I just love being able to do that and save family money. And I also do a ton of donating. So as I said, anything that you see in my stockpile area are things that I have been able to coupon for and basically get for free. So what you're not gonna see in my stockpile area is food items because it is very challenging to coupon for food. We do sometimes, not very often, but sometimes get coupons for food and can find deals. Like I can save on cereal a lot of times, maybe some snacks and things like that, but there are no coupons for produce. There are no coupons really for canned goods or meat or things like that. But because of couponing, I have a grocery budget that I don't have to worry about because think about it, I don't pay for any personal care. I get all my hair care for free. I get all my oral care for free. My laundry detergent, I don't pay for that. My toilet paper, my paper towel, my cleaning supplies, all of these things that I now do not have to budget for can go towards our grocery budget for food. So even though I'm technically not couponing for food, my couponing helps me save money on groceries because these are things I do not have to budget for or pay for, which is fantastic. So if you're looking for an end of the world, where's your food stockpile in case everything comes crashing down, that is not this video. I think everybody should be prepared and have extra stock of food, and I do, but again, this is simply my couponing stockpile of things that I have coupon for. And I explained, I don't coupon for food, and I explained why. I think if the pandemic taught us anything, it's that we all need to be a little bit more prepared for if something unexpected happens. And I was a couponer way before the pandemic ever happened, which definitely was a blessing because at the time, not only was it somewhat challenging to find some food items, but man, you couldn't find toilet paper or cleaning supplies to save your life. And thank goodness that was something that we did not have to worry about. My daughter did not have to worry about, extended family did not have to worry about because I had a stockpile already. So now that my shelves are all reinforced, I'm getting these heavy items back on here. And I like to organize all of my hair care in groups. So, you know, all of my head and shoulders are together, all of my Tresemme are together, all of my Dove are together. And I also like to organize them so that I have the conditioner in back and the shampoo in front. Any sets that I have, there are a few that I don't have sets for, but for the majority, I have sets for everything. So it just makes it super duper easy to find everything. And I've got some hair care over on this back shelf that I'm going to now move over here and put all of the hair care together. I used to keep my more high-end hair care, like the OGX right here, the Nexus. I personally use the OGX and the Nexus. So I would keep those in a separate spot, but I'm just gonna move it all together to make it more organized, more cohesive, and just make it make more sense. So if you are in the United States, because I know in other countries, couponing doesn't exist this way, the same way that it does in the United States. Several of you have told me that. And you wanna get started with saving your family some money. Remember, you can do it at your own pace and you don't need paper coupons because of the stores giving you so many digital coupon options. This is a huge passion of mine, something that I truly enjoy doing and love doing, but not everybody is gonna wanna have this massive stockpile like I have. And not everybody is gonna have the space that I have to house this huge, massive stockpile. But I coupon for so many different things, even things that we don't personally use or need, because I love being able to give back. I donate to a local women's shelter and I donate to one of my local churches. They are always in need of personal care items, like hair care items, deodorant, body washes, bar soaps, cleaning supplies, things like that, that people that have a small budget or maybe they're out of work or whatever the case may be, these are items that are so expensive to have to go buy at the store, and I love that I can donate. And last year, I also started doing a yard sale where I would sell my excess stockpile items, which has been so awesome. I've already done two this year as well, and it's so great to be able to just give everyday people that are working hard and trying to save money a great deal on items, because I sell my items for so, so cheap. But again, you can cater couponing to whatever you want it to be for you, and the reality of the situation is, it is a ton of work. So you do not have to coupon so that you can donate like I do, because I put so much work and energy into couponing that I can do whatever I want with the stockpile I have built that I worked very hard to do. It's none of anybody else's business what I personally do with my stockpile, and it's none of anybody else's business what you personally decide to do with your stockpile. But I do love donating, so I will specifically coupon for items that I know I can get for free so that I can donate and help somebody else out. If you just found me and you don't know much about me, I have three daughters. So having a big stock of feminine care is a must, and it's something that we rotate through fairly quickly, as you can imagine. So it's something I am constantly looking for deals on. So I'm now moving over to the second shelf, and I have the same issue on this shelving unit that I had with the other one, where I've got like my body washes stored, my bar soaps, my lotions, where these shelves are bowing. I didn't buy probably enough of the plywood. I really didn't wanna, I wasn't sure if it was gonna work. Like I said, I don't have tools at home to be able to cut things like cut plywood or anything. So I bought enough that I knew the majority of my heavy items I could hopefully reinforce. So I reinforced these shelves as well, and I'm storing, I'm rearranging everything to make sure that I can see exactly what I have and put everything together in like items. So on this shelf, I actually use that one piece of plywood that was not working on the other one. So I did have to like kind of squeeze the one end where I put my bar soap, cause that's not quite as heavy as the body wash, is sticking up a little bit, but no big deal. I will eventually get a tool and be able to shave a little bit of that off so it fits in there better. I'm telling you, it feels so good to be able to reinforce these shelves a little bit because there were so many times that if you touched one product because of the way it was bowing in the middle, they would all just go down like a domino. It was a big fat mess. And I was so mad. I didn't actually pay for any of these shelving units, thank goodness, cause then I would have been really mad. I saved up rebate money that I got through couponing to purchase all of them. And I did the same thing, buying the plywood to reinforce them. I just used the rebate money. So I didn't actually touch money out of my bank account, which is nice. And all three of my girls call the couponing stockpile, my store, which I love. And it does kind of look like I have a store down here. And it's so cute. Whenever they have friends that come over, they will always take them down to the stockpile. And the friends are always so amazed because the reality is there's way more regular consumers than there are couponers. So I don't think their friends have ever seen anything like my basement, but they love it because they come and my girls will be like, do you need anything? And they always leave with little bags of goodies. And, you know, like Donna's friends are tweens and Viv's friends are teens now. So they love to go shopping through my makeup stockpile and they love to get like beauty items, like shampoo or body wash or things like that. And it's just the cutest thing ever. When I first started building a pretty significant stockpile, you know, of course there are always going to be people that make their comments about hoarding or things like that. Even Grayson, she was like, mom, like I kind of feel like maybe you're getting too many things and it's kind of looking like a hoarder's basement down here. None of that bothers me at all because I fully know that people just don't understand. Just like I wouldn't understand if, you know, you had a love for collecting, I don't know, baseball cards. Like that's not a passion for me. And I would not understand if you had a full basement full of baseball cards, right? So it doesn't matter. It's not up to me to understand your passion. But so funny, I told you, I've had two stockpile sales this year and I have a very large, like one of the easiest things to coupon for and to get for free every single week is toothpaste. And Grayson had come down to the store, as she calls it, to get some toothpaste because she was out and she was like, I don't like, I don't like this yard sale thing. You're running low on toothpaste. Now, mind you, I probably had 20 tubes of the toothpaste that she uses, but because she didn't see the normal 60 tubes, she was like, you're running low. So it's so funny how, you know, somebody forms an opinion at first because it's something they don't understand and they don't have a passion for, but then it becomes something that they adjust to and they realize, okay, my mom's a couponer. She likes to do this. And I can always go to her house and get toothpaste whenever I need to. And then she walks in and she's like, where's all the toothpaste? And I'm like, honey, don't worry, there's plenty there. And like I said, everything down here in this stockpile area is things I have couponed for. So some of the things you may not, like you may think of toothpaste or body wash or things like that, but if you notice, I got KY Jelly up there. I couponed for that. That's something that I don't buy. So if anybody ever needs it, sometimes I coupon for things and I'm like, is anybody, like, do I know anybody that could use this? Is this something I could donate? And sure enough, I'll have somebody say, hey, do you have this and this in your stockpile? And I'm like, yep, I sure do. And so I'm able to give it to them. So I got this little cart here that's got like some medicine items and my batteries. And now we're gonna move over to my third shelf, which houses all of my facial care items. I did have a bunch of my high-end hair care over here that I already moved. I have a whole shelf up on top that are baby items that I coupon for primarily for personal use. That was one thing when Grayson, my oldest daughter, who is 24, oh my gosh, she's almost 25. I can't believe I have a 25-year-old. When she got pregnant, I was like, she is never going to buy diapers. This grandma is going to make sure that I have all of the baby items I can coupon for so that she never has to worry about the expense of buying diapers. Because I can so remember what that was like when Viv and Donna were young and in diapers. And they're 22 months apart. So Grayson is 24, Viv is 13, and Donna is 11. And with them being 22 months apart, there was a period of time that I had two of them in diapers at the same time. Oh my gosh. So I didn't coupon back then when they were little. And so much of our budget went to formula or diapers or just needs for the babies. And so I just said when Grayson told me that she was pregnant and I was so dang excited, she is never going to buy diapers or wipes. I can coupon for all of that stuff. So I always work it into my deals. And look at this. I got some boxers down here that I got for my husband for totally free, I'm telling you. I coupon for everything I can coupon for. I think I had four packages last year that I got for free. So I put two in his stocking and now I have two more for this Christmas that I can put in his stocking. And down here, I've got a bunch of beauty items like makeup brushes. I've got some hair masks, all kinds of like tweezers, nail clippers, hair clips, all of those things. My girls love this area here. Nail polish, nail files, all of those things that they can always come down and get whenever they need. And like I tell you in every video, I do this in stages. We are now on day two. There you go. You got to see Donna Jean and Heidi who I am babysitting. So we are now in the back part of my basement. This right here houses my cleaning supply area. So I'm moving some of the stuff from the front. If you caught my first basement declutter that I've decluttered back here, I'll link that video down in the description box. And then right over here is my laundry stockpile. So right now when I'm doing the editing of this video, my mom is actually in the hospital and she's babysitting Heidi, that adorable little French bulldog. Heidi's been in one of my other videos as well, but I had to take her because my mom is not doing super hot in the hospital right now. And she's babysitting Heidi for like four months. So I've had Heidi overnight for a couple of nights now at the time I'm making this video. She's so, so sweet. This mini fridge has been down here forever. It was given to us when we moved into the house about 10 years ago and we've never used it. So I'm going to go ahead and move it out of the way. I'll work around you, okay? Oh, you're going to move now? Okay, thank you. We got to vacuum, okay? So I bought a super cheap little mini fridge that we have in the back room that we store like our beer in and I got it off a Facebook marketplace. It's not like, it's just a standard little mini fridge. It's not a nice one. This one is way nicer. I don't know why we never swapped it out. Somebody gave us this one probably, I don't know, maybe six months after we had already bought the other little mini fridge. So I think I'm going to swap those out and I'm going to move around these bins here that I have. I store all kinds of different things in these. One is like vitamins. One I've got like any of the cotton products, like cotton swabs, cotton balls, things like that. I am going to stack them. I know somebody's going to comment and say it's not safe. No, it's probably not, but no children come down here. That top one is not heavy at all, but yes, if it did fall down, it could hurt somebody. I don't let EJ come in the basement. So it may be something I change out at a different time, but I've had these things stacked for quite a while and we've never had any issues. So when I decide I want to change it out, I will change it out, but right now this is what I'm going to do with them. The only part of my stockpile that I don't keep down here in the basement is my paper product supply. All of my toilet paper and paper towel that I keep in my garage, which if you caught my garage declutter, you probably already saw the beautiful paper stockpile that I have. If not, I'll link the garage declutter down in the description box, as well as the first basement declutter where I did the back room. And now we're on day three and we're getting close to being done. I would love to hear any projects that you are currently working on in your house. I know this one, it's not a decluttering, but it is a massive cleaning and organizational project and it's going to feel so, so good when it's done. But as I always tell you, like take things. I know there are some people that can just do everything all at once. I just don't operate that way. So I have to do them in multiple days in small chunks of time. That just works way, way better for me. And my granddaughter Violet, cause Grayson is pregnant, she will be here in September. So I've been trying to stock up on some smaller sizes of diapers, hoping and praying. Grayson prefers Pampers for EJ. So that's what I always get. So I've been stocking up on Pampers. I always liked Huggies for my girls. So I'm hoping that she doesn't say, mom, the Pampers aren't working. I mean, it's fine. Cause I can actually keep on for Huggies easier than I can keep on for Pampers. But we'll switch it out if she doesn't like the Pampers. And even if she doesn't like them, she'll use them up because she's so grateful for that I get all the diapers. So we're now over in my oral care aisle. These are the Crest toothpaste that most of the family uses that she thought I was running low on. Really not running low, just running low according to what she is used to seeing. Cause I sold a ton of Crest toothpaste in my first stockpile sale this year. The Colgate did not sell as well, but here is my oral care section organized as much as I'm going to organize it right now. And I just realized I called it my oral care aisle. So used to everybody calling it my store that I actually apparently have an oral care aisle. Here is my cleaning supply aisle. This has stayed pretty darn organized since I did this back room of the basement. I just add to it when I get new things and of course take away from it as we are using things. But here is all of my cleaning supplies, all nice and organized. And this week I did coupon for some laundry care items. I am actually running a little bit low what I normally do in my laundry care aisle cause I did sell quite a bit during my stockpile sale, but I don't sell anything that we personally use. So we personally use the Tide Pods. I still have a ton of those, but I was running low on some things. So I went and grabbed some this week cause we had some good deals and I'm just gonna organize this up a little bit. And this is all of my laundry care stockpile. It is seriously such a blessing to not have to put this stuff into a budget to purchase. Like sometimes I just wanna faint when I see somebody go to the register in front of me and they pay $20 for laundry detergent, which most consumers do, but I don't pay anything for it. And I just wanna show them how they can save and get that for free. But like I said, couponing is a lot of work. And so a lot of people just won't take the time to learn it and won't do it, which it's totally fine. When I bought my shelving units, I also bought some peg boards. So that's where I store like my toothbrushes, my floss, my razors, all of those things that are kind of hard to store on shelves and they fit very nicely on peg boards. Now I'm just working on cleaning up some of the things that were stacked on top of things. Like I had some of the kids artwork that I'll put in their memory bins. And you may have noticed I have these two like corner, they're like China cabinets. I am not getting rid of these. When my husband and I got married and we moved into our first house, it was a very small house and I could not really fit a China cabinet in my dining room because it was so small. My grandmother bought me these two corner hutches and she bought them in the boxes, put them together for me and like stained them for me. They're not, I don't even think they're real wood to be honest with you as I'm cleaning these out and feeling them, but they're very sentimental to me. And so I am not going to get rid of them. I may choose to do something different with them. I have a little bit of my stockpile stored down below in each one, but I'm not really using the top section of them. But for right now, they are just staying right here and I am not getting rid of them because I love that my grandmother did that for me and the fact that she put them together and stained them for me, they're just very special to me. And you can see that board kind of up on top above this one. That is like an entrance to our crawl space. So I didn't want to put a big, one of my big shelving units over here and block that in case we ever need to get into the crawl space for any reason. And this is very, very easy to move. So I chose to put this one over here instead of one of those big shelving units that would just be an absolute nightmare to have to take all the products off and move if we needed access to the crawl space. I am almost finished. Oh my gosh, thank you so much. I wanted to show you, I'm gonna vacuum. I had an empty container here, but thank you so, so much for spending this time with me. I appreciate you so much. I hope it gave you a little bit of inspiration to maybe organize or declutter an area in your house. It just absolutely no question feels so much better once things are in order and you can see everything you have and it's just way less chaotic. I love coming down here and just admiring my stockpile. It may sound weird, but I worked so dang hard to build this stockpile and I am so proud of it that I love admiring it. And when it looked like this, this was our before, it was not a fun place for me to come down to. It just made me feel anxious because it was such a mess. So this is what it looked like before I got in and organized everything. Let's take a look at the after. And if you enjoyed this video, make sure you give it a thumbs up. I appreciate you so much. All right, let's get to this after. Oh my gosh, it feels so, so much better. So when you first walk down the stairs, this is the view you are getting. It is so much more open feeling now that I moved those bins and I've got my, you know, carched chairs right there because a lot of times we need them. And so that's easy access for us. I've got all of the bags off of the floor. Everything is on its shelves, organized nicely and in like group items the way I like it. I've got my rocking chair sitting here in case I ever decide I wanna come down here and sit and just admire my stockpile. I actually might take that rocking chair and move it into the grandkids' room once I finish redoing that room. That was another thing that my grandmother bought me when I was pregnant with Grayson. So definitely not getting rid of that. And I left my table sitting up here. I've got some empty bags down there just in case I have another stockpile sale. I have bags to give people if they buy things, but I already have some bags up on the table. Those are gonna be things that are excess right now that I wanna take to the donation center. And now that I can see everything that I have, I'm gonna go through and figure out what we have some excess of that I can send in for a donation. And I'll definitely be getting to the other half of the finished part of the basement. Both sides are a huge project in themselves, so that will be in a future video. Thanks again so much for spending this time with me. I hope you have a great rest of your day. I will see you again next week. Bye!