narrowing winter

My basement is like the roads in winter. As winter progresses, the pathways get narrower and narrower.

It's cold down there in the dark basement. Boxes of Christmas, now dehydrated untile next year, still need to be put away, books returned to my basement "library", a pile of items for that tag sale I never seem to have time to organize. But I still have to navigate it with baskets full of laundry because the washer and dryer are across the room on the far wall.

It's frozen outside, the snow plows piling up the remains of snowstorm after snowstorm with no thaws between, like cumulative flood of water that will never recede. Two lane roads are now one lane, maybe one and a half lanes. The parking lot at school has huge towers of snow that I have to navigate against oncoming school buses that barely fit through the lanes all by themselves.

When spring comes, and the snow melts, the lanes will return to full size and it will be warm enough in the basement to spend a day organizing. Until then I'll just keep squeezing through the basement and the streets, and hope I don't encounter any obstacles literally in my path.