Before and after

The endless cleaning and purging continues. Today was G. and L.'s room... a task I try to avoid if at all possible. So, I do avoid it and the room descends further and further into chaos. I thought I'd share some before and after pictures and some of my process with you, if, like my two girls, you become completely overwhelmed at what to do with a room like this.

This is actually the picked-up version. You know, I say, "G. and L., please go and clean your room." And they go and move some stuff around, get distracted by the stuff, and end up playing the rest of the afternoon. So, it's not at its absolute worst (I can still walk across the floor), but it also isn't clean by any stretch of the imagination.

I realize, that in their defense, the room had become too full of stuff for two six year olds to be able to adequately clean it, so they gave up every time. In thinking about their room, I realized that they just have too much furniture to be really workable. There are three extra pieces that are either left over from other girls bunking here or are pieces that were useful, but are not used anymore.

The first thing I did was to marshal my older troops and ask them to remove the extra pieces, which they did. That gave us some room to work. The other problem was that many small items had migrated into their room which had actual homes elsewhere. Well, that, and there was just stuff they no longer played with. So, the bulk of the afternoon was spent with G. and L. sorting each of these thousands of little tiny pieces. We made baskets for each type of thing.

Once that was done and the debris was off the floor, it was time to do some rearranging and cleaning. Finally, we found homes for the things which were being kept and would live in their room. Here are final results.

We moved the beds next to each other. The only thing we really need is a small bookcase (they don't have one) that can go between the beds and will also double as a night stand for each girl.

L.'s desk got moved to this wall. That nice empty space to the left will house my very large dollhouse which has been in storage. They girls love dollhouses and I think they are finally old enough to handle this one. They are very excited about it making an appearance next week.

I realize it looks pretty empty. Each girl has a large under bed bin where she can keep whatever tchotchky and gewgaw that she desires.

The small animals and the Legos they like to play with each have a bin which live on the dresser, and the doll clothes which L. uses for her stuffed animals are in the pink basket.

Here is what was removed (along with four bags of giveaway stuff). Each basket is a different sort of toy, all of which live elsewhere. I haven't repatriated them yet, because K.'s room is in the morning and I know he has his own stash that needs to be sorted.

So, there you go. The room looks much, much better (ie I can stand to walk by it.) G. and L. are also very happy with it. 

I'm exhausted!