Monday, December 9, 2019

The Room Re-Wrangle: Phase 1

Guys! We got so much done in Phase 1 of the Room Re-Wrangle, and I'm so excited about how everything has come together and looks right now. I blew my own expectations out of the water with what we accomplished, and I can't wait to show y'all how things look AND get everything finished up in a few weeks.

I started the plan the Saturday before Thanksgiving and first cleared everything out of Paige's closet and pulled her dresser drawers out before when took her nap. While she was sleeping, Drew {who was my #1 helper} and I cleaned out her closet and dresser and put Paige's stuff in. Everything 'in limbo' went into the playroom during this process - that room was hoarder heaven and it was BAD.

Paige's stuff in the playroom - Drew's face cracks me up!

Cleaning out Drew's closet created a giant mess on the floor!
But we got it emptied out!

As a reminder, Paige was keeping all of Drew's furniture and bedding, so it really was largely just clothes/shoes as a transition. We did rearrange the room a little as we wanted one-side of the bed to be against a wall and needed to get my glider in here.

Things got worse in the playroom when we moved Drew's stuff out.
It was very scary haha.

We did also use this time to go through the kids' stuff and organized/donated quite a bit of stuff. We also have some very good friends newly pregnant with their first baby, so we now have several bags of stuff for them!

Paige's room was almost ready to go by the end of Day 1.
This picture is after we moved the bed to by the window and vacuumed.

Practicing for bedtime

Next up, we needed to clean out Trent's closet to get Drew's clothes into it. Luckily by now, we had Paige's old room cleaned mostly out so we could move Trent's stuff right in!


The worst part of Trent's room is his books. He has a million books and no space. My dad is going to build him a wall-mounted set of shelves, but we're letting him recover from pneumonia and radiation first. {grin} So for now, his books are in a giant rubbermaid tub.


Trent is me made-over when it comes to clutter. His closet - well, really his whole room - was the worst to clean out. And you'd think with him being the oldest, he'd be the most help. Nope. He was the least help, but luckily he stayed with my in-laws during some of this, so his room was the last to get finished because I didn't have to worry about where he'd sleep!

Another hard-earned empty closet!
Yes, even with all those piles on the floor, I consider the closet empty. Ha!

Now we had a little bit of a roadblock here because we decided for the time being Drew would use Trent's old dresser and Trent would use Paige's old dresser. We need to figure out what type of bunk beds Trent is getting to know what other furniture we need, so I figured it was just easier to leave existing dressers where they were. Drew was NOT happy about this because Trent's dresser was covered in stickers from a misspent nap in around 2014.


Drew and I spent a large portion of Saturday evening removing these stickers. It was NOT fun, but thanks to a friend, I learned you can use a blow dryer to heat up the glue. That definitely helped a lot of these stickers come off much faster.

We got about 75% of the way through when Drew was okay with it.

And with that we finished Day 1!

Goodnight girls!

Drew was upset we didn't get Trent's bed taken apart.
I told her she should have thought about that before the sticker removal demand.

Sunday after church we really focused on Drew's room. We took Trent's bed apart, moved the mattress set Brent's parents gave us in, got her clothes and shoes in the closet/dresser, created her little reading nook!

She was so excited by her window seat and
spent a lot of time Drew-ing it up!

Trent's room was starting to come together, 
but you can see it's half baby stuff and half big kid stuff.

The playroom was still pretty atrocious on Sunday.

My parents came over Sunday afternoon because they had 2 of my sister's kids. The 4 kids we had collectively played which enabled my mom to help me!!!

We finished Drew's closet.

The bed is gone and ready for new things.

Napping Paigey. All the heart-eye emojis.

Finishing up the sticker removal with a still-tired toddler.
We also got all the stars and 'Paige' off the walls in Trent's new room.

Playroom maybe looks better?

Monday I got a lot more 'stuff' transitioned between the rooms. The biggest progress was getting Paige's room almost all the way done, but I'm saving the pictures for below when it was complete! Monday was cut short because of work and my sister's birthday - we went over to my parents' house to celebrate!

Tuesday my parents came back over to help AND they took my kids home with them for a slumber party! The big focus was Trent's room {my job} and the playroom {my mother's job...which she knocked OUT of the park}.

I decided to move a lot of Trent's LEGO's into his closet.
He doesn't play with them as much, and he has tubs and tubs of them.
But first, I needed to get everything out of there that wasn't LEGOs.

After HOURS of LEGO work!
His closet was organized, dresser was cleaned up.
He had 1 box of stuff to go through...and that box is still on his floor.

Drew's room is the least exciting because she wants to paint her walls.
Until we do that, this is all that got hung up.

I got Trent's room completely done until we get bunk beds and the book shelves. He kept his existing Star Wars posters, and I hung up some deer horns my FIL gave him.

A somewhat 360 degree look at his room.


The book shelves will go where the dresser is,
and the dresser will move under the Star Wars poster.


I'm bummed I don't have any pictures of the playroom after my mom finished. It looked better than it's looked in at least 6 months. She cleaned out a ton of stuff and really organized! She was SUCH a big help!

The last thing I did in Phase 1 was get Paige's walls redone. We kept probably 75% of décor that was Drew's but moved over the signs my sister made and a few other Paige-specific things. 

With the bed moving, I had to re-center this wall collage.
Since it also used to have 'DREW' going vertical,
I added a few things from Paige's nursery.

A lot of these items date back to Drew's nursery!
But we also pulled in a few of Paige's things and brought her pom-poms in.

Paige was adamant her moonshadow poster had to come into her new room!


So there you have it! I thought this would take me all week, and I didn't think I'd get nearly this much done! 

Paige's room is completely done, and we only have a handful of things left to tackle:

Drew's Room:
  • Put her bed together - she wanted to paint it but has decided to hold-off on that {hallelujah!}, so I need to do this ASAP
  • Paint her walls - we still need to pick a color and will do this over Christmas break
  • Buy new bedding - I think we've agreed on what she wants, just need to order
  • Decorate her walls - we must paint first
Trent's Room:
  • Bunk beds - I think we've decided on a set, but we're letting it marinate
  • Book shelves - when my dad feels up to it, this will get done
  • Wall décor - I doubt Trent will want to do anything else, but I want to make sure he's happy with how his room is decorated
  • Bunk bedding - once we get a bunk bed, we'll need to get bedding for the top bunk
Anyone still with me? I'll be so excited when we are totally done, but the kids are already loving their new spaces, and it was a relatively seamless transition! 


3 comments:

Kathryn Bagley said...

This post completely drove my anxiety into high gear! But it's my thing and I wish I was home to help organize and de-clutter! The rooms look great so far!

Emily said...

Whew this was overwhelming to read! You have a lot of stuff! And the LEGO bin, lol. Aaron’s LEGO bin has shrunk because adam suddenly decided he wants to rebuild all the sets and finds some very deep satisfaction in searching for the tiny pieces needed (note again that I’m talking my 35 year old husband, not the 6yo).

Natasha said...

I can't believe how much you got done. This was A LOT of work but so interesting to read about. Way to go!