Hi! This is Melodee, and I know that kid’s rooms can have you feeling really down. Sometimes you have to ask yourself where do you even start? It feels like a battle. Asking your child to clean up your room, but then it doesn’t get cleaned up. You dig in your heels and say you aren’t cleaning it this time and the battle wages on. More and more gets added until eventually you are clearing a path. This is the situation with this room.
Yikes!!! Right? This room started out innocently enough. A trip to her dad’s for the summer and a simple suitcase that didn’t get unpacked. Followed by a sleepover with a friend and all the toys brought out to play. Then blankets and laundry lost their places, along with things being tossed in that she had left around the house. It’s a simple process and we all know the drill. Things can quickly get out of hand and then it multiplies.
The question becomes, “but where do I start?” The best way to win against a room like this is not too hard. It is similar to how you would win most battles; divide and conquer!! For this room I started with the obvious, laundry. Her laundry basket is usually stored under her bed and it was mysteriously empty. Ha ha. Gotta love kids. So I gathered all of the dirty clothes and a limited about of clean clothes. There were 2 loads of dirty clothes scattered around this room which went straight to the laundry room.
Then I hunted for the shoes. Lots of shoes. I paired them together and put them in a shoe organizer in the closet. This helped clear the floor too. I was making significant progress. The toys were my next mission. I sorted all the barbies together and put them in one bin, and then I found the legos which went in another bin, and so on. I could actually see the floor!!!
This moment was so rewarding!! I also recommend that when tackling a room this bad that you do it when the child is away. I was able to get rid of two trash bags worth of old papers, toys that had seen better days, and old decorations she had saved from a wedding this summer. She hasn’t even missed them.
Here is the desk area behind her door that housed her distressed piles of collections.
This area was mostly decluttering. I put all her art supplies together so she could sit and color or write in her journals. Her jewelry was all put in one container, and her small makeup collection was put where she could access it for special occasions.
Here is the desk after.
She has a small room and I respected that she likes more “stuff” around than I prefer. So her books and legos and favorite sleeping bag and a pillow are hiding under the desk. Along with extra diapers for her baby brother. And since it all is tucked away behind the door it is a good place for a compromise.
The next phase of getting this room back into shape was reworking the furniture. I relocated the bed to the center of the wall, moved her table lamp next to her bedside and took out the small yellow cupboard that she obviously wasn’t using to keep her toys inside. I opted to use small bins under her bed so it would be easier for her to slide them in and out for playing.
This helped open up her room and opened up more room on the wall by the door. On this wall I added her dresser and I was able to fit her little brother’s dresser too! (He’s still in with mom and dad). But it is great, because there was plenty of room now.
So, remember that when a room seems too overwhelming and it is easier to just keep the door shut. (My dad’s method of coping through my teen years). It is possible to conquer the battle of ridiculously messy kids’ rooms, and reclaim the peace that is possible, (if everyone in your house would clean up after themselves).
The best part about this whole journey of clearing the clutter and the mess is that this is MY daughter’s room. YES, MY DAUGHTER… While I don’t profess to be the most organized person or obsessed about things being a certain way, I have become efficient and effective at clearing out clutter, organizing, and I love the process of making sense of a space. I have to attribute this talent I have to being the mother of seven children (aged 1-24). My children have given me a multitude of opportunities to clean up and organize over the last 20 plus years, so I guess that makes me an expert, by default.
Happy Organizing!!
(435) 669-8664 