Finally Finished with the Kids' Rooms!

I know I have been neglecting this poor blog and my organizing activities...although even though out of sight, it hasn't been out of mind!

Since I do my organizing and cleaning in the evenings after the kids have gone to bed (mostly), I find myself cleaning the kitchen OVER AND OVER AGAIN instead of getting back to the study reorganization project...which is still not done.

But instead of returning to the study, which is truly out of sight out of mind (it's the room I'm least likely to go into each day), this weekend I decided to finish the younger boys' bedroom first. I worked up there for hours yesterday and finished it off today, and I must say, IT FEELS GOOD!!!

I posted the "before" photos on this post--take a look. Pretty bad. And those photos were taken back in May--you can imagine how bad it got before I plowed into the mess. Each night, as I was putting the boys to bed, I got so tired of looking at the mess, I had to finally finish off the job.

The "job" not only involved going through boxes of junk, toys, and clothes, but also tackling our major children's book problem. We have myriads of plastic bins full of children's books--they spilled over into the attic crawl space. No more. (I also organized the attic crawl space a few months ago--I don't think I blogged about that. This was desperately needed!)

After I cleaned and organized Son #1's room, I noticed that in spite of the fact that I organized all of his books neatly into a bookcase, he pulled them out and stacked them on the floor in the order he wanted to read them. He also is not very good about putting them away--he likes to see the piles. So I asked him if he would prefer to just have plastic bins for his books in his room. They don't look very nice, but they would be easier to deal with--he could just toss the books into the bins. He agreed, so I moved the nice bookcase into the little boys' room.

Sorting through the books and dividing them into Paperbackswap, Goodwill, and "keep," I was able to get the remaining ones on the bookcases with some room to spare. It helps that the bunk bed set has some room for books, too.

Another big chore to tackle was the clothes issue. With three growing boys, it's quite a chore to manage the clothes they outgrow--so we can pass them on to the next boy. I spent a lot of time organizing clothing yesterday. I also had Son #2 go through all his shirts and choose which ones he liked, because he is quite picky and I had noticed that he never wore a lot of his shirts.

Then there was the toy and puzzle sorting, charity donation assigning, and garbage collecting. I finished most of the dirty work yesterday and returned today for the finishing touches (hanging up some pictures and vacuuming). We'll see how long they can keep it clean! At bedtime, Nick told me that he didn't like it all picked up! I think my children like chaos and mess. Lucky me.

Here are some photos of the finished product:

Kieran considers the desk "his" even though he shares the room with his younger brother. It's all arranged by him and adorned with his treasures (including the radish and tomatoes from our garden, which he helped plant):

Portland is in the midst of a heatwave, and this room is the only room in the house with an air conditioning unit!

Chris perusing all the chapter books that used to be his...

The closet, which needs a bit more work but is WAY cleaner than before! You can see the remnants of my clothing organization efforts.

So I'm completely out of order with One Year to an Organized Life, but now that I have the kids' room sorted out, it's time to return to the study. One day, I resolve to have it done!!!

Kids Bedrooms

The One Year to an Organized Life book covers kids' rooms in September, so I continue to be out of sequence here. I must be driving my husband and my friend Shelia batty. I still haven't finished the study--no. I will be lucky if I finish it by the end of June at this rate!

In the meantime, I've been focusing on other things. We did the big bedroom swap here a few weeks ago. We have a three-bedroom house with three children. The kids' rooms are upstairs, and one of them is bigger than the other. Chris, the oldest, has been in the larger bedroom since he was 3. We've told him that if he wants to have his own room, he would need to move to the smaller room.

We bought bunk beds for the younger boys, and Kieran (the middle son) was also not crazy about moving into the other room.

But once we finally made the move (and stopped just talking about it), they've all made the adjustment nicely.

I'm still working on cleaning the younger boys' room (including the annual swap-out-the-winter-and-outgrown-clothes routine, which can be time consuming with three boys...in and out of storage, organizing sizes, etc.). But I tackled Chris' bedroom last week. I convinced him to go through his books and put some aside to give away. The ones that were in good shape we took to Powell's (and he earned $24 in credit for them), and the others we donated or posted on paperbackswap.com.

I know that I should be engaging the children more in cleaning out their rooms, but honestly, it is easier to do the initial cleaning myself because I can declutter while I am doing it. I do wish my children were excited about decluttering and moving their seldom-used stuff along, but they are not (understatement of the year). I would have a very difficult time getting rid of anything if they were helping me. So I declutter and clean, and I will expect them to keep it clean, or at least reasonably clean.

Here is Chris' new bedroom:

And this what I have yet to tackle in the other room! (Leftovers from when Chris occupied it, in addition to various clothes, toys, etc.) Plus, I need to sort out the closets in both rooms. So much to do!!

We're very happy with our purchase of the bunk beds and dresser--we got the whole set for $750 via Craigslist, and they are solid wood. We're using the toddler bed for Nicholas for now instead of the usual twin bed because the toddler bed has rails.

Aye, aye, aye! Just looking at these photos is overwhelming! But I think I must tackle the rest of this mess before I get back to the study!!

Organizing the Kid Dish Drawer

My intention is to take "before" and "after" photos of my organizing projects, but I must get into that habit. (Mike is horrified at the thought that I will be posting our messy habits online...but I figure it will be a satisfying exercise...maybe we DO have skeletons in our closet, our house!!) I forgot to take a before photo this time, so I took a "during" instead!

Anyone who has or has had children knows how easily one can accumulate kid cups, plates, etc., especially when so many restaurants give plastic cups with kid meals. We have designated a lower drawer for our kid plates and cups, so that the kids can retrieve them on their own. The drawer has not been cleaned out for over a year! (or two or three?) It was a jumble of junk.

After fishing everything out of the drawer, this was what was left--pens, cheerios, paper, soy sauce, Christmas tree ornaments, game pieces, feathers, magnets, and pieces of junk:



Here are all the lids I threw away (can't be recycled, alas)--most of them did not have matching cups to go with them!



Here are some of the cups and plates lined up (after many of them had been thrown away!).

And here, at last, is the organized drawer--much easier to find things!

My intention is to organize my house and life without spending tons of extra money. Therefore, our house will not look like House Beautiful or an IKEA catalog. We will invest in organizing systems when we need to, but I'm hoping to make a lot of progress simply by getting rid of stuff, so it's easier to organize what we have.