Some of you smarties have already found my reviews blog, which is so new it doesn’t even have any reviews in it yet. I will not blame you one bit if you don’t read it ever at all—I read VERY FEW review blogs myself. (I do read Live Well Spend Well because WHO CAN RESIST?)
I had SUCH a productive weekend. Yesterday I bought Elizabeth a bed frame I’d been considering for a few weeks at a consignment shop. It’s painted white, and I think it’s very OLD, and it was $82 which seemed like a lot of money until I went to a few furniture stores to look at new twin bed frames and HOLY CRAP, so this weekend I went and bought it and brought it home.
I needed it because we’re rearranging the kids. Right now it’s William and Edward (bunk beds) and Henry (crib) in the biggest bedroom, and Elizabeth and Rob each in one of the two smallest bedrooms. But Rob doesn’t want to sleep by himself, and we were going to need to rearrange anyway when Henry went into a Big Kid Bed, so now Edward will be in a bunk bed with Rob and William will be in a bunk bed with Henry. But—Elizabeth’s bed is really one of a set of bunk beds, so to reclaim it we had to buy a new single bed, and we also needed to buy a mattress because Henry will be in a twin bed instead of a crib. Are you following all this?
So yesterday I bought the frame I’d been dithering about. And today I went out and bought a mattress, and I did it with very little fuss: went in, listened dutifully to the nice salesperson, bought the mattress that cost what I’d had in mind. I can go pick it up on Tuesday.
That went so well, I stopped on the way home at the consignment shop again, to look again at a little phone chair (a combination chair and endtable) I’d seen when I bought the bed frame. I had thought of it several times and thought I would buy it, but when I went back and tried it out, it was so uncomfortable there was no way. But while I was there, why not do a little browsing? And that’s how I came home with two bureaus.
Then I did my Tidying Task for the weekend, which was going through our Massive Collection of children’s books. I bought a lot of these when Rob was a toddler and wanted a lot of books read to him and I felt I would GO MAD if I didn’t have new material. I bought most of them at library book sales, where the books are 50c each or 3/$1 and the librarians seem to have very poor counting skills because they’ve known me since I was 8.
Until recently, I was thinking, “If I like the book, or if any of the kids like it, I should keep it.” But today I was thinking, “We get fresh books from the library every week anyway, so why are we storing so many books HERE?” Still, this was a first sweep: if I had any doubt, I kept the book. Here are my results in the four—FOUR—areas of the house where we keep children’s books:
Area 1, the downstairs playroom, top shelf only, Before
Area 1, the downstairs playroom, top shelf only, After
Area 2, Rob’s room, Before
Area 2, Rob’s room, After
Area 3, upstairs playroom, Before
Area 3, upstairs playroom, After
Area 4, Elizabeth’s room, Before
Area 4, Elizabeth’s room, After
The books we’re donating to the library—plus there’s another half-full diaper box I had upstairs already and didn’t want to bring down just for a photo:
I just wanted to remark how impressed I am that Henry is already in a big-boy bed for real. My son is a few weeks older than Henry (I’m not stalking you; I remember when you wished him happy birthday), and he’s still in his crib. This is more out of necessity than anything else, as my son is a litte, ahem, high-strung. We’re probably going to try the 3-sided crib in the new year, but right now, if he could get out, his room would be DESTROYED in about 45 seconds flat. No, seriously, I’ve seen him do it, in a good mood, when he’s “playing” in there. I can’t imagine what he’d do (his favorite frustration strategy now is to throw things) if he was grumpy about it being bed time (which happens almost every night) and could actually get out of his bed. Anyhoo, good for Henry!
Well done! Now I want to tidy something but all that’s left is two areas I am just terrified of. One is the bathroom which really just needs to be bombed out and started over. Tears!
My poor mind is trying so hard to imagine the combination chair/endtable, but it cannot. Is this a Thing, a Phone Chair? Should I have heard of this?
Clarabella- Henry’s still in his crib, too, and I am VERY FEARFUL of what will happen when he moves to a big bed—probably this week, if we can get the new bed set up. We’ll have to see if metal/canvas restraints are necessary.
Alexa- It was kind of like one of those school desks that has the desktop attached to the chair. Except it was off to the side and had it’s own leg to support the off-to-the-sideness of it. And it had a little shelf for a phone book, and a table above it for the phone. I’m trying to sketch it but having a comical lack of success. If you imagine a dining room chair FUSED to an endtable on one side—well, that was basically it. (But with a cubby for a phone book!)
Oh, Alexa! I found a picture online that is the similar to the phone chair: it was a little like this one.
Excellent progress!
And, um, you can just go ahead and ignore the message I sent you about the books I’m selling. (She says sheepishly) I guess I read your post about ten minutes too late!
Great job Swistle! I just need to know why that bin in the upstairs play room is tipped katty-wompus!?! That drives me insane!
You continue to inspire me.
Wow, 4 boxes is a LOT!!! I spent 4 hours yesterday cleaning this room — again. I organized stuff into underbed bins, and actually put stuff on the shelves in here (genius!). I also got rid of a whole bag of stuff w/ the new “toss” mentality you’ve given me!!! Kind of like your idea w/ the books — why? I think for a split second and if a 2nd thought doesn’t pop in my head it’s gone! I have entirely way too much stuff to keep indefinitely. One of the things I got rid of was a gag gift from my god-daughter when she was teething – one of her biscuits. It’s still in the wrapper, and she colored on it for me.. but she’s FOUR now. I can throw out the old expired biscuit and just keep the memory.. sheesh.
also – it might not apply to you, but my cousin gave me a fantastic tip. I have a LOT of paperwork clutter. Items I’m not sure how long I should hold onto. She said to hold onto the important stuff for a year or so – then SCAN it for a digital copy and recycle/shred the rest. You can have it all for records still, but w/o the boxes of files and clutter! Of course it’ll take inital time to start scanning everything, but the idea of getting rid of paperwork clutter is almost worth it!
You made some serious headway! Nice work! Also would love to see the coveted bed that is now Elizabeth’s. I’m visualizing something very lovely, so let’s see if I’m even close.
I should have been more productive this weekend…
I think I did follow the whole bedroom rearranging thing, but maybe I missed something so apologies if you already answered this: I am curious how you made these decisions. How did you pair off the boys in that way? Is there some sort of natural affinity between Rob and Edward and between William and Henry, or did you want to do an older-younger split, or what? And which set gets the big bedroom and how did you decide that?
It looks great! I got in the mood to sort through all the kids’ clothes today. So: all clothes going to the consignment store are hung up and ready to go; things that are nice enough to be donated but not nice enough to sell are in the Goodwill bags; and all obviously summer clothes are put away in bins (we are keeping some short-sleeved things out because this is Texas). I’d forgotten my daughter has plenty of winter clothes that still fit her, so yay for that.
Oh, and I bought some clothes at the thrift store yesterday for both kids. AND I got their Halloween costumes for under $15 total! SCORE!
yay for the cubey things on sale! But, I wanted to say: Sometimes, if you expect to use something for a long time, it’s worth the risk of full price in order to get the whole set up that you want. I can’t tell you how many times I wanted one more of something I’d bought 4 or 6 or 10 of one or two at a time, only to discover they were discontinued and now my system would be forever not the same. Unless I went and bought more than enough of something else entirely. It’s happened.
Sure, just because they’ve carried something for years, doesn’t mean they’ll have it next month.
And, yeah, I know, I’m a little bit OCD about wanting all my things to match, or stack together, or whatever.
Wow – that’s a lot of books!! Good for you!
I have boat loads of children’s books (I used to be a kdg teacher) but I can’t bear to part with any of them. It’s the one thing I can’t declutter for some reason. I just love books and can’t seem to do it!
Jess Loolu- Oh you have NO IDEA how much I love to discuss such things! (Paul, poor guy, has INTIMATE KNOWLEDGE of how much I love to discuss such things.) I will try to keep it brisk.
The natural pairings, I think, would be Rob and William (the two olders) and Edward and Henry (the two youngers). However, Rob and William are like vinegar and baking soda and can’t get along at all. And both older boys like the littler boys better than they like each other, but William is too close in age to Edward to love him the way he loves Henry. So the pairings with be Rob and Edward (6-year age gap) and William and Henry (6-year age gap), which makes everyone happy.
The room-sizes thing is more complicated now, and another of our finalist plans was to put all four boys in the biggest room and do something else with Rob’s room, and we might still do that. The big room will be William and Henry’s, but it will also still be a community playroom; when no one needs the playroom, we’ll need to reconsider.
I’d like to figure out a way we could have one room for sleeping (a small room, maybe, if all they’re going to do is sleep in it), one room for quiet studying/reading, and one room for video games, loud stuff, and tv.
I would love to do that. No, I need to do that. My husband has a habit of going to the used bookstore and getting tons of books that I never read to the boys.
WOW! You have been productive. I really need to do some book weeding as well through our shelves. We could seriously downsize a bit.
Impressive decluttering. I can’t give up books. Even books I hate, and refuse to ever read again, (Confessions of a Shopaholic, and the next 3 books in the series? still have them!) I can’t get rid of.
Good luck with moving to the big boy bed, and the great room rearranging.
And thank you for coming by my blog!
We have several places where we keep childrens books as well, and the method of storage has always been a bit of a problem. We have these bins we got at the Christmas Tree Shops to house them under our coffee table, but they are falling apart. Keeping my eye out for cheap but durable new bins!!!
I love that you’re a *real* mom. I love how you keep it real and aren’t afraid to show us the before and after pictures…it makes me feel so much better about my organizing “projects” at home (I hope this comes across in a nice way- because thats how I mean it). :) I’ve been so frustrated lately with baby toys and big boy toys and riff raff and crap everywhere and I just don’t even know where to start. I feel like I get rid of stuff ALL the time and yet there is just still so much stuff. Its like a cancer– it just keeps growing. I was thinking of telling my husband I want to hire one of those professional organizers because clearly Im inadequate in this department and I just can’t get my arms around it!
I just ordered Nathan a play table this morning because he needs somewhere to play that is NOT our kitchen table (otherwise the baby gets into his stuff and we have a mutiny on our hands). I was going to take a picture of his room and put it on my blog but Im too embarrassed….why can’t my house look just a little *little* something more like a Pottery Barn catalog?Anyway- thanks for sharing your book piles- it makes me feel better about my own. :)
May I be so indelicate as to inquire, how much did you pay for the twin mattress? Because we are about to do the Bed Shuffle and I need 2 twin mattresses for bunk beds, and Holy Shnikeys are they expensive! I’m seeing them for 300 or 400 each, which is not what I had in mind.
That’s about what we saw them for, too. When we bought mattresses for our bunk beds, we could buy just the mattress (not the 2-piece set with whatever that thingie underneath the mattress is called—box springs?) because the bunk beds were designed that way, and I think we paid around $250 (this was a number of years ago). This time we had to get the box spring, so it was nearly twice that much.
Scramble with the little chicks, cheep cheep cheep!
Books are the one (or many) thing we cannot seem to purge ourselves of. Especially Brian, who even refuses to get rid of COLLEGE TEXTBOOKS THAT HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH HIS LIFE NOW. Even though we have one full room in the house dedicated to the books (when I want to sound fancy I call it our “library” but it’s just an extra bedroom), there are still piles of books in every other room in the house. I’ve made peace with it because after 13 years I realized it’s not ever changing.
But you’ve inspired me to the point our clutter is now contained in the office and I’m cleaning that sucker out this weekend.
Kim- Oh, man, I kept some of my college textbooks for a decade, thinking I might want to look something up in one sometime. (NO.) Then I kept SOMEONE ELSE’S textbooks (some psych and soc textbooks I found at the library book sale) for five or six years, thinking I might want to do a self-study sometime. (NO.)
Nice. I just did the same thing. We too have books all over the house; in several rooms, and we too still make a weekly library trip as well.
Though I have to say all of Sophie’s current books were either given as gifts or from my childhood and I cannot even BEGIN to tell you how grateful I am that my parents saved them all.
Of course, they had a HUGE attic in which to store them.
They also gave me all of my tween books – Judy bloom, baby sitters club, sweet valley high…! Though I have no idea if those are wildly outdated at this point, or will be by the time sophie starts to read them.
I love getting rid of things. It feels so cleansing! I especially love it when I can give something useful to a charity organization instead of sending it to the landfill. The only trouble is that my husband is a borderline hoarder so he’s always checking around to see what I’m getting rid of!
Re the changing of beds for the kids, doesn’t it seem like with kids it’s just one constant transition after another. You’re never done! :)
holy shit that is mega progress. y our mil better fucking notice or i’m going to mash her over the head with a cast iron pan
i was going to tell you i’m doing a pay it forward give away but i’m wondeirng if you need one more thing in your house even if it is quite small