No Before/After Pictures

I should have taken pictures . . . but I didn't.  We've talked about getting platform beds for the boys for a while, and last week Bo found 2 on Craigslist for a great price.  I had also been thinking about emptying/organizing the boys' rooms as they head into the new school year, so everything started to happen this weekend.

Bo put up the platform beds, and I started going through Nate's room. I finally emptied the 1/2 of his closet where I had stashed boxes when we moved in this house (almost 10 years ago) and set them outside to be dropped off at Goodwill. 

We made a visit to IKEA and bought new dressers for the boys.  Years ago, we went from dressers to bins on shelves in the closet.  That system worked great, but the boys are bigger and their clothes take up more space, so I realized that we needed either bigger bins or dressers. We found dressers that would fit into the space on the other side of the closet, leaving the shelves for storage.  They look great!

We also picked up an office chair for Nate's desk (he had been using an uncomfortable folding chair) and new bookcases for both boys.  We had to remove Nate's ceiling fan, since the blades went into his new bed, so a new lighting fixture for him was found.  While in the lighting department, we found 2 lighting fixtures to replace the hideous ones that have been in our kitchen since we moved in.  I don't know why I didn't spend the $60 years ago to replace them!  The new ones look great.

I think we bought everything (including the beds from Craigslist) for less than $100 more than it would have cost us to purchase just the beds from IKEA if we bought them brand new.  I love that kind of bargain!  The beds are in perfect shape, and one even came with a mattress.

We purged quite a bit out of the boys' rooms -- including bags of clothes that also went to Goodwill.  Nate's room is 90% done, while Colin's room is about 60% done.  The new beds give them so much more room, and the purging will also give them more freedom to play with the things that they truly enjoy.

I asked them each to name the most important toys/items in their rooms and they both came up with 5 categories.  Things that didn't fall into those categories were purged for either Goodwill or the trash.  It worked well and allowed them to make decisions themselves about what stayed and what left. I also curtailed the amount of storage space to limit the amount of things they could keep.

I'm hoping to finish both rooms completely by Friday, but work may interfere a bit with my plans. We'll see how much energy I have left after teaching the next couple days to see if I can finish up.  I'll post AFTER pictures when they're all done!