Thursday, July 21, 2011

Organizing Bootcamp Days Three/Four

I was WIPED OUT yesterday and did very little cleaning. But, I am back on track. Did I tell you we have a 7 year old's birthday party to throw this weekend???

Anyway I wanted to reveal the PLAYROOM makeover.

It went from this...

To this!
You can see the kids have already been taking advantage of the space.

Let's look at the shelf. I didn't take a great before photo. But, it was BAD. Stuff was falling off the shelves, everything was mismatched and piled on top of each other.

So, when I see THIS now, I am HAPPY!

Here are some other angles...including the other side of the room.

This...

And this...

I want to take a moment and tell you about some of the realizations I had in the playroom:
1. There was too much stuff. It got messy. Because of these two things, the children were NOT inspired to play, use their imaginations or spread out and enjoy the space at all.
2. I bagged up ALOT of small toys, "junk" and pulled it out of the room. I plan to not throw these things away immediately, but to put them in the attic and see if the boys even miss them. If they do not, I will go through them one more time and pull out a couple of things, and then DONATE IT ALL. Eliminating so much stuff out of this room changed it's whole mood immediately!
3. I didn't BUY a lot of storage gizmos. I am fortunate to have a dear friend who donated some nice storage bins to me, and I went to the dollar store (the DOLLAR STORE) to buy those nice little green and blue bins. The bigger blue and green bins I got at Target for $3 each. I also re purposed other bins/drawers/etc I had already and I had the brown couch cover stored away. To organize, you do not have to buy a lot of new things!
4. I tried to stow away, store away and put away as much as I could and not leave stuff "out." Also, I didn't mean to leave that lamp there. It isn't staying there, LOL!

Since I am done here, I am moving on to the KITCHEN, PANTRY and DINING ROOM. Tomorrow I will do the second floor.

3 comments:

  1. I bet your kids will not miss a thing. My advice IS to donate it right away. You could tell them you are going to, so other kids who do not have as many nice things as they do will have something to place with. Or don't tell them, and they will probably never notice. ;) Looks great!

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  2. oops - PLAY with, not place with. haha!

    Also, I meant to say as well that my kids play with a lot more when they have less to choose from too. Rick calls me the "toy nazi" because every so often I go through everything and throw out/donate a ton of stuff. He thinks it's mean (or maybe obsessive-compulsive?) to get rid of their toys constantly, but they always seem to find things they forgot about after I do it and end up playing with more, though there is less. ?? Not sure why it is, but it works!

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  3. I agree. Adara tells me I'm mean, but I'm finding that steadily purging ALL of our extra stuff helps the whole atmosphere of our house! So proud of you lady!!!

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