The clutter. The clutter was trying to kill me. I promise, it was.
Now, y’all know I’m no neat freak – far from it. In fact, most of the time my house is in a state much closer to tornado strike than to Better Homes and Gardens. But we were in serious need of toy storage for the munchkin. (We’re in serious need of toy/Lego storage for the big munchkins, too, but that’s all upstairs where I don’t have to see it all the time. And that’s also a topic for another post!)
Behind the dragon-riding cowboy, you see the toys around the fireplace.
In the past, most of Sam’s toys were in our living room, messily piled into bins around our fireplace. It was sort of functional and not at all pretty. Not to mention that half the time, Sam couldn’t get to his own toys without help. With the latest cold snap at Christmas, we wanted to actually use the fireplace, so Bryan and the big boys (with a little help from Sam) schlepped all Sam’s toys into our front room. (If you haven’t followed the saga, it’s technically the dining room, but it’s too small to be functional that way and we never used it. For a long while it was a sort of junk room + piano room, then Bryan’s office + piano room, and now, it’s…well, that’s what this post is about. Oh, and it’s where the Christmas tree was all set up this year.)
Kitchen assembly with Grandpa
I decided I really liked not having all the toys in the living room. And after Grandpa set up Sam’s new play kitchen in the front room and Sam played in there most of the day, I decided that the front room was going to get yet another “makeover.” It was going to become the piano room/play room.
Armed with this new inspiration, I must have gone out on December 26th and hit the after Christmas blow-out sales for organizational wonderousness, right? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! No, I let the idea percolate until I could figure out what I wanted to do (and to make sure other interested parties were really on board with the idea). And, in the meantime, our front room looked like any variation of this:
And, if I’m really honest, these pictures are “neat” compared to what it usually looked like.
I had to make a Target run earlier this week and noticed that all their cube-storage was still on sale. Yesterday evening, Sam and I made another Target run. I decided to start with just a small 6-cube shelf to see how much it helped, and go from there. We also picked out three canvas bins to use in it. Sam was quite excited about the idea of his new “bookshelf.” He talked about it all through dinner and was very adamant that I had to set it up TONIGHT. So, I obliged. (I was itching to get going on it, too.)
Daddy was at basketball practice, so it was just Sam and me working on the new shelf. It went together pretty easily, though I’ll admit the quality is definitely you-get-what-you-pay-for. BUT, it was only $35, so even if it only lasts us 6 months, I’m okay with that. The clutter was trying to kill me, KILL ME, after all. Sam played and cooked while I built. He even tried to help load books onto the not-quite-finished shelf.
Once it was all assembled, it was bedtime. And yes, I timed that strategically because I planned to do another toy-culling once someone was in bed. The clutter was murderous, remember? Now, to make a short story long, here’s the current state of things in the front room.
The brown bin is the music bin, the puppy dog bin is the dress-up bin, and the frog bin is the smaller vehicle bin.
Clearly, there’s still work to do and more toys to pass along to other children, but this is a VAST improvement. Sam can see and get to all his toys on his own, and it will be easier for me to pick them up after he’s in bed for the night (or more accurately, in that 10-minute crazed cleaning sweep that’s done before company arrives). We also have plans for a small desk in that room for the new family computer. So, there’s still work to be done, but I’m happy with how it is for now, and my randomly activated OCD-ness is satisfied.
Back in the fall, we were notified that Jacob’s hard work in his academic classes qualified him to take part in the Duke Talent Identification Program (TIP). In this program, selected students can take the SAT or ACT. Depending on their scores, they might be invited to other accelerated learning opportunities. It’s a pretty neat thing to be selected to do (and one that I know others in the family, did, too – he comes by those brains honestly!) On January 26, Jacob reported to take the SAT. He was in a room with 11th and 12th graders and the test that was supposed to start at 8 didn’t start until nearly 9 (we don’t know why). 4-ish hours later, Jacob emerged in a pretty good mood, saying the test was “hard, but not THAT hard.”
