Thursday, 18th of March 2010 at 10:30:03 PM Joshilyn insists that I am an organized, tidy person. I tend to disagree, on the grounds that I do make messes—plenty of messes—just, generally, not in public areas of our house. My general philosophy is that the family room and kitchen and downstairs bathroom should be pretty presentable at all times, because these are the places a guest entering the house is likely to be. In the meantime, my closet regularly devolves into a shameful trash heap and our master bedroom is where confiscated items and anything that “I’m going to put away later” goes to die. But I don’t, you know, entertain people in my bedroom so to my mind this is okay. (That particular mess is another topic for another day. Ahem.)
However. My children do entertain guests in their bedrooms. And also in their “sitting room,” which is a large room that leads into my son’s bedroom and houses most of their books and other assorted stuff, as well as having a desk and a chest of art supplies and two seating areas and a television. I have dreams of this palatial space designated as Kid Haven rendering us “The House” one day when my smallish humans are closer to adult size and want to spend hours with their friends but without any parents directly in their sight. Surely so much space set aside for them will bring them all here to hang out, rather than God knows where, right? Right. (If you disagree, hush.)
Oh, I hope you didn't want to sit there. Or actually use that desk.
Hi, other side of the room. I'm sorry, did the bookcase barf on you?
Anyway, here was the grand plan: Clean and organize both the playroom and, by extension, my son’s room. (My daughter’s room is on the other side of the house. And while she is organizationally challenged as well, it is my son with his Asperger’s—I’m told that keeping everything and an inability organize everyday items is a pretty classic Aspie trait—and his nine billion Legos and his room right on the other side of that wall that needed the most help.) The main bullet points in making this happen included
1) A trip to Ikea for sturdier shelves.
2) Merciless tossing of garbage.
3) Ruthless culling of playthings.
4) A place for everything and everything in its place.
Optional, but helpful if your child is a magpie like mine…
… 5) Buy kid a new duvet cover so it’s really the only thing he notices.
I have found that asking the children to help on a cleaning adventure like this is about as pleasant as a bikini wax. However, if we execute a major overhaul while they’re off visiting their father, they are so enamored of the wide open space (and new bed covering!) that greets them on their return, they don’t even notice what’s missing. It’s not like they could find anything before, anyway. So with my husband’s help (he can build Ikea furniture like nobody’s business, man), over the course of a weekend, the space was set to rights.
Hey, have a seat! Or work at the desk. Or come into this completely clean room over here that you'll just have to take my word about.
You could totally watch TV in here now. And not touch anything.
By the time I’d worked over to the other side of the room, it was just more of the same. Throw out the trash. Pick out the outgrown or broken or ignored playthings. Make stacks of books and try to figure out where to put them on the bookcase. (Confession: I still need to cull through the bookcase and donate books to the library, but I didn’t do it this weekend because everything else took so long.) The pillows on the daybed were eventually fluffed and every karaoke CD found its case and got put away. We purposely picked the Expedit bookcases because they’re essentially just big cubbies, and for both rigid Aspies and surly tween girls we reasoned it would be easier to “get with the system” when each cube has a clear designation of what goes where. Bins on the bottom! Comic books in this one! Board games in this one! Building kits over here, and this space reserved for him and this space reserved for her.
Ahhhhh.
Look; I know it’s not going to stay this way. I know our careful routine of picking up every night will go off the rails on a busy day or that we could be one playdate away from total chaos. I know. But it’s so nice to have it all tidy for now. It was so nice to take bags of stuff to Goodwill and get rid of mountains of trash. Right now it looks better, and we all feel better, and it made two days of grunt work totally worth it.
It's been almost a week, and it's still clean. It brings a tear to my eye!
Wow, nice work Mir! Now I just have to frame this in my mind so it inspires me instead of intimidates lol.
There is very little that makes me swoon like a clean, tidy, organized space does.
He builds, she sorts, she tosses, she donates, aaaaaaand it’s Mir (and Otto), FTW!!!!
Sigh — that’s a beautiful thing. It gives me hope that I will survive this weekend when I tackle the kids rooms. What did you use for lego storage? I’m dealing with not 1 but 2 people’s obsessions. (One of them is my husband. *grin*)
The red bins on the bottom of the bookcase are these, and one has the Lego and file of instruction booklets, and the other holds a couple of sets of Struxx. We’ll see how they hold up. (This would not be sufficient if you have someone who likes to sort their bricks, of course. My son prefers the dump-it-all-out method, so I could do a single bin.)
Seriously? Have you told the kids the name of those bins? That could be good for *days* of bad jokes!
Flort (with an umlaut, of course!)
Bwaahaahahahahah!!!
That sounds like exactly what I do to my kids’ rooms once every few months. Once I can’t even find a path to the beds any longer, it’s time to massively clean. My 6 year old’s room has now stayed clean for a week and a half, I give it until next week at this time
.
Don’t you love organizing? It’s so tangible. Plus, now you have the added benefit of actual proof that “Yes, children, this room can be clean and I expect you to keep it like this (insert framed picture of room here) or off to bed with no dessert for you.” Mwah ha ha.
Looks great!
My 18-year old daughter is a bit OCD and likes to organize – I pay her to clean out my closets and cabinets. Then we have to listen to her bitch about what we mess up; talk about role reversal!
Wow — it looks great! I am tackling my closet this weekend. I have lost weight and inches, and I have a LOT of old clothes that I just don’t wear. Not to mention the bags of old crap and bills and receipts that I need to sort and shred. Fun!
I have those bookshelves to organize homeschool stuff for my daughter, and I love them. We don’t have that bin, though; I love the lid!
I did a big purge of stuff last year when my daughter was in (day) summer camp; will probably have to do it again. Thanks for the motivation!
Oh no I have that same couch! Except mine is the giant sectional version and was handed down to me so it’s covered in cat hair, cigarette burns, and bubblegum. I hate the pillows. I like to turn them sideways and imagine that they are the crust of the earth.
Your room looks awesome though.
It’s hard to imagine that the kids likely have a genetic disposition to grow into neatnicks but history has a way of repeating itself.
Nice job.
Confession: Saw the first pictures and thought, “Wow, Mir is like me. And, there are only 2 versus 6 kids.” Got smug for a moment. Perhaps a teensy bit holier than thou. Then I see the after pictures. You, my friend, are the queen. I bow down to you. Not only are you thin, but your house is picked up. SIGH! I may have to stop liking you. DOn’t take it personal, it’s my issues, not yours:)
I’ll have to take a pic for you next week when it’s all gone sideways (floorways?) so you’ll still be my friend, Annette.
beautiful!
Wowza! Nice work.
Nice work! It is inspiring me to organize as we unpack in our new house. I had a goal of weaning stuff as we packed but then we ran out of time so even goodwill piles got moved … sigh.
Great job! Isn’t it crazy how kids fight and fight the process if they are around and if they aren’t they just are amazed by all this new space to play in?
Wow. I’m planning to tackle cleaning and if I can do half of what you’ve done, I would have died and gone to heaven.
Can you teach how an older chickadee and monkey should deal with this? It’s no longer JUST outgrown clothes and books. It’s OMG bills and sports equipment too. It’s too bad there’s no end in sight if I were to buy shelves. I’d be lined with shelves and…the explosions in smaller clusters.
It’s a real struggle (and a constantly shifting target) to get the kids to put things where they belong. For me it’s always a two-pronged process of 1) cutting down on the sheer amount of STUFF and 2) having logical places for the remaining stuff to GO.
And then we have a family meeting and discuss what happens if they can’t keep their space clean. We used to put their stuff in “time out” (take it away for an extended period of time), but lately it’s gotten so bad that we’ve stipulated that anything misplaced that’s also being mistreated (that means a book left open, spine broken, on the floor… or pieces of a toy crammed behind couch cushions) is an automatic loss. Gone for good. It’s harsh but I see no other way.
That is so inspiring! Now if only I could make the feeling last until I was home and near the actual disaster zones that need to be organized…
Ooo! That last picture does my psychotically anal heart good!
And now, even if you do have playdate Armageddon, at least you know that the stuff will all fit back into place and all it will take is a cleaning frenzy. Much easier on the brain than knowing that you couldn’t put everything away even if you tried.
Well done, you!
I did that last weekend with both kids’ rooms (minus the trip to IKEA). We rearranged the furniture in my daughter’s room to where she wanted it and it has helped her keep her room cleaner (this week at least). I know what you mean about sorting when they aren’t around and I do that occasionally. But sometimes I make them go through every thing with me so we can talk about what they think they are using and what I see them *actually* using. It leads to some interesting discussions and usually they get rid of more on their own that way. Now the trick is to control what comes IN the house as well. My daughter loves to buy all sorts of junk with her money and I’m really trying to show her the actual time that is associated with each purchase.
Thanks Mir. Cause I would really miss you:)