We’re gearing up to install bamboo floors in the boy’s bedroom and playroom! Hooray – goodbye hideous brown carpet! Hello cleanable, light and airy bamboo! Logan is especially excited because it’s very hard to actually play with legos and toys with wheels on carpet, so hooray for a more playable surface! (In my dreamworld, I’d put down cork…)
Anyway, in preparation for this large event, we’ve done a HUGE purge of toys and books that nobody plays with OR has an emotional attachment to. This is something that we go through (usually) twice a year. But with the boys 4 years apart, there were lots of toys that stayed in the playroom for many years. This time, Logan (AND Liam) were able to say goodbye to lots of toys.
Please note: Andrew & I both feel strongly about letting the kids hold onto something for emotional reasons only. All four of us were involved in this round, and we ALL had to agree that something would be better suited in either a friend’s house (like Miss Maren) or donated to the Goodwill. That toy closet still looks full, but it’s because it has books from 3 bookshelves in there (so we can move the shelves out) as well as the blocks and trains that usually live in bins underneath that huge play table. I can already feel the “ahh…” of putting the room back together and having all toys & books stored in a way that the boys can actually FIND what they’re looking for (there were many exclamations of joy when unearthing a book that one boy had been looking for). This glee at knowing the boys will be able to find things easier was my “one moment” this week! Here’s hoping it gives me the strength to “git ‘er done”!
Andrew’s been going full speed ahead on these home improvement projects, it’s so exciting! He’s a bit like a steamroller when he gets going, so I have to be quick on my feet. The walls in the boys room need to be painted too, and as we don’t have the original paint, we decided to let the boys choose a color…with some supervision. BUT, there was no time to bring home trial pots and paint, I had to take the boys last night, pick out a color and buy a gallon right then and there, because we’re painting today after the carpet gets ripped out! Dear LORD I hope I helped guide the boys towards a nice blue!
Don’t forget to enter me giveaway, it ends Sunday night! And I’ll leave you with a couple more photos of our Tahoe trip! Liam and Stirling LOVED the kayak that came with our rental house in Tahoe, Logan – not so much!
![om [one moment] meet up](https://i748.photobucket.com/albums/xx125/alamodestuff/OM_alamodemeetupbutton.jpg)
alamodestuff Linda has started a weekly meetup based on taking a moment each week to really notice something as you go about your daily grind life. I need to do this. You may want to too – read more about it here:
7 Responses
You know I love you for your organizational skills, Candy. This is great and so motivating to me! One question: where do you store your Legos so the boys can actually find them? We struggle with that a bit.
Good luck with the paint color and laying more flooring. I’ll be ripping up carpet in our family room soon, so yee-haw to improved homes!
Great questions Cyn!
It took awhile to come to this (you have to ALL let go of the idea of ever re-building that particular item on the front of a particular box again – ALTHOUGH…as I’m typing this, Logan came in with a Start Wars spaceship of some kind that looks remarkably like the ship Luke rides in – the one with R2D2 in the front, so it is possible!) In the upper left-hand picture the first table on the right has 2 large clear plastic bins with wheels (Joanns). One bin holds all “regular” Lego pieces, the other one holds weird ones, and inside that big bin is a smaller one just for lego people and things attached to people, (like swords & helmets).
I set up organizing systems for the playroom long ago (a bin of some sort with a label on it – in the beginning they couldn’t even read!), and every time we go through the playroom (2-3x a year) things get re-sorted. As the kids get older this gets easier…they get a little better at actually putting the items back from whence they came – but I’m really regretting (now) not doing this more often…the more out of control the playroom is, the more time the boys spend with electronics and the less they spend playing other ways. Logan has been amazingly re-engaged with the Legos since we cleaned up the playroom in late May (my definition of “clean” in this sense is those 1st pictures…you should have SEEN what it looked like in May! YIKES!
Does this help?
Candy
It does help. My organizational wheels are turning, thanks!
Oh how I love to purge and organize – not that anybody ever lets me – they’re all too attached to their stuff. Can’t wait to see the room all done. Love the pics of the kayak!
Wow. I so need to continue on my decluttering journey. Our legos are all in one big bin… not the best situation but at least for now they all go in one place.
I sure could use some Lake Tahoe! ‘Twas 104 both in RI and Sacramento (difference being the humidity) and a dip in cool waters would be lovely. The kids look like they really enjoyed themselves!
You have accomplished a lot these past few weeks!!! Looks awesome.