Making Room

For the first Saturday of February, Jon suggested we have an epic room cleaning day. I was thrilled!

Everywhere we've lived for the past 8 years has always been "temporary". And I hate that word.

Basically, I know we won't be here a long time. We've never been anywhere a long time. Most of our bedrooms (ok ALL of them) over the years have been glorified storage closets with a bed in it. We just always felt like it wasn't worth spending a lot of time on because we never hoped to be in any one place very long. Our room has ALWAYS been an embarrassment for me and I hated letting people see it - or really spending any time in there myself because it was so cluttered. It stressed me out.

For the first time ever - I'll be revealing and show you what we had to deal with. As Jon described it, it was getting to "hoarder status"... Here are some before pictures:

as you walk in the door...

looking to the right...

farther right. the computer desk is right there inside the door.

 

when you look back at the door you can see we still had our Christmas wreath up

Computer/sewing desk crammed by the door.

barely any walking room on my side of the bed! I had to squeeze through the corner between the bed and the desk.

cubbies all a mess at the end of the bed.

 

ironing board leaning up against the bookshelves because the hanger for it was holding up the Christmas wreath on the door. Margo's crate was piled on top with Jon's book project, our Christmas advent calendar, boxes of artwork, and baby shower gifts waiting to go out.

 

the dresser that we sold - all piled with papers and junk

 

oh yeah - AND Jon's Star Wars figures still hanging from the glow-in-the-dark ceiling. Did we mention that this was his room as a kid??

Gosh, it makes me stressed out just looking at it all over again!

We set up a plan for things we wanted to accomplish in our room and how we would like it to better be organized.

On that Saturday, Nicolette came over so that we could go to a petting zoo / fundraiser over at Del Oro. Kate had a fun time seeing the goats, petting the guinea pigs, and eating her first tootsie pop! We did our own self guided tour around campus since it had been a few years since any of us had really walked around there. It was fun to see all of the changes they had made, and especially the expansion of the agricultural area! I was never into science or FFA in high school, but now I sort of wish I had been. The school has a new aquaponics system for gardening, which is really neat. We had one of the juniors helping out at the bake sale show us how it worked.

After the fundraiser Nicolette helped us with phase 1 of the room project - moving our dresser into the garage! We had someone interested in buying it, but they were in the process of moving, so they couldn't pick it up for another week. I really wanted to get moving with our re-organization, so once the dresser was out, we were able to set up an "office" corner with our computer in a more accessible area, along with our calendar and white board of scheduling and "to-do" lists. We also moved Margo's crate, our Craft-N-Doodle storage, and the hamper to a better space under the window, which alleviated room for closet maid storage cubbies on the opposite wall. It really opened up the center of the room and just felt so much bigger!

Here are some of the "in-between" pictures:

it has to get worse before it gets better, right??

At least the cubbies aren't at the end of the bed anymore!

We were able to go through a lot of things that I didn't even realize we still had; artwork, toys, clothes, knick knacks, and just plain junk to donate, trash, or use in some other capacity. Jon vacuumed and I cleaned the blinds (hallelujah!) I just love having a neat and organized space.

The room still has a long way to go. It is definitely not done or the way we would like it ultimately, BUT it was a HUGE step and I feel like we made a lot of progress.

 Here are the after pictures in its current state:

AH it's just so refreshing! Now that we've taken such big steps, it feels a lot more manageable to tackle the little stuff. It is SOOO much better! Cleaning off shelves, reorganizing the books, getting paperwork off of the cubbies, acquiring more fabric cubes, and getting better Christmas/holiday storage containers are the next goals. A Saturday well spent!!