January 19, 2012 – Lisa Holcomb

For Day 11 I tackled the biggest boys bedroom.

BEFORE:

oh my (he assures me that he was trying to find something, which led to this mess. I love how that happens.)

the closet full of mostly my stuff and/or empty containers

I don’t have any DURING photos. I was too busy being busy. And now for an explanation of my process. A real life friend asked today how I manage to do all that I do. Here’s how: when I move furniture I take everything out of it. Then I take it as far apart as it goes, unscrewing screws, taking off drawers, legs, anything to make it lighter. Yes, this is time consuming. Yes, it’s tedious. Yes, I probably ought to ask my husband to move stuff for me. But then he’d have to stand around while I internally debated all the pros and cons of where I wanted the item to end up and move the parts back and forth and back and forth while I decided and let’s face it: that would make him insane. I’m trying to avoid insane Nick. Also of note, I didn’t do this room in an hour or even two. I started on it right after I dropped big kids off at school around 7:30am and worked on it off and on, with frequent rest breaks and time off to take Greg to school and to eat meals, until 1:30pm.

Here, for instance, those plastic drawers: mostly empty. Also: lightweight. They’re living in the garage awaiting a trip to another home. There was a little plastic cart in the corner you can’t see that just wheeled on out (also mostly empty, oddly enough). That all got moved the first 15 minutes, then a fifteen minute break.

The file cabinets got emptied out (each one had one empty drawer already). The top one had drawers that came all the way out, the bottom one did not, but I already knew that (that’s how they came to be stacked that way). I only moved them a few feet across the room to hold up the desktop (which, don’t tell David, was the bottom of his crib) of D’s new desk area. I moved those one at a time, with a rest break in between and afterward.

Since the closet was then nearly empty (I still have a stack of file boxes of old high school & college memory stuff in there that needs tending, but that’s another day entirely), I slid the dresser (particleboard, also sans drawers) in there. After that another break, this time for lunch. (See the pattern here?)

The only heavy thing to move at all was the former TV stand – also oddly particle board – but it was much lighter after removing the drawer. (The family that took our old TV is coming to pick it up later this week)

Also in between everything was the ever-present picking up of Lego bricks. They’re EVERYWHERE (they were even, mind-bogglingly, under my bed).

AFTER:

A nice, neat desk area for David, with drawers in the file cabinets for his Scout stuff & papery goodness and the hope chest for Lego brick storage. (Not shown: his display shelves: they’re to the left of the frame)

The closet of joy and emptiness. Or NOT. I found 12 belts in there. 12. He can’t ever complain about a lack of belts again.

(Notice that I’m not showing the beds in these pictures. Yeah. That’s where I dump all the stuff I no longer have any interest in picking up. I put away the stuff that’s big and in the way, but the nitty-gritty stuff that needs a kid who knows where it goes to put it away? Well, that’s what beds are for. And kids.)

I’ve spent the last couple days ( #’s 9 & 10 on the challenge) working on the smaller kids room.

BEFORE:

Ben’s closet before (at least the top half of it; no idea why I took just the top half, but look, so many clothes, so many piled games, the bottom half was piled clothes and piled toys)

Mysteriously there’s no photo of Greg’s closet before. Imagine a closet with 6 items hung up top, a few empty hangers, then below: a chest covered with 2 blankets, 8 pairs of shoes, a dozen outfits, dirty socks galore, and a dozen or so books.

DURING:

The weeding out stage, which we actually did over the weekend when Ben was available for consultation. Most of these clothes were lovely, but we had nowhere to wear them. At home we’re t-shirts and jeans casual and at school & scouts there’s the uniform (which is also worn to lessons), so no need for these cute collared, stripy shirts.

Greg’s closet turned out not to be as bad as I thought in that the costume chest held nothing but costumes, much to my delight. He does have a lot of shoes, though.

AFTER:

BONUS:

Since I’m doing crazy organizational things, I decided to do a bit in the actual room as well as the closets. The kids haven’t been playing in there at all since we added the nook, which ended up being the place they tossed all the stuff they didn’t toss into Greg’s closet. They couldn’t find any of their toys and so they were being lazy and just playing their DS’s all the day long. Well, I’m not going to let that go on forever. So I took out the Nook O’ Messiness (they still have the hiding nook in the bathroom – have I featured that here yet?) and moved Greg’s bed back to be even with Ben’s again. I took out the tiny desk that no one uses and moved the shelves over there.

Then I pulled in a folding table from the garage, one that is long enough to accommodate two boys sitting at it, hung a peg board above it, and hung all their card games, lego bricks, nerf stuff, & a box of their creatures above it. I’m envisioning this as a space that Ben can work at Scout stuff at and Greg can build things at and they can play games together just the two of them. It’s still a work in progress (I’d like matching chairs and the board to be a color they choose, but hey this is a big change and it was FREE), but here’s how it looks right now:

Special thanks goes out to my friend J.P. who watched Greg for several hours yesterday and my friend S.C. who watched Greg & David for an hour and a half while I worked on all this.