One big thing I managed was to finally get my label maker up and running. I am a little nervous about putting labels on places Sam can reach, since in the past he has destroyed every label I created. I'm not exaggerating: canisters in the kitchen, shelf labels in the office, it did not matter. All were peeled, all were ripped apart. But I am trying to follow the rules, and he needs to learn to leave the damn things alone, so we're trying it.
Anyhow. Task 7 was Toys. This is actually one of the most important, yet most daunting, tasks I'd been planning to do for ages now. We've had a lot of Sam's toys locked up in his closet for the past year or so. Now it's time to figure out what stays, and what goes. Pictures!
Before: From the door
Before: From the window (ugh...I was hanging onto those bins to use to organize the room, but still.)
Before: Shelving above door
Before: Closet from left door
Before: Closet from right door
Before: Closet from inside the right door, looking at the left
Before: Closet from inside the left door, looking right
After: From the door (He seriously couldn't wait. I'm not even sure what he's playing with here.)
After: From the window
After: Shelving above door
After: Closet from left door
After: Closet from right door
After: Closet from inside the right door, looking left
After: Closet from inside the left door, looking right
In all, I threw away three huge black bags of stuff that was broken, worn out, or otherwise unusable/unable to be donated. I had a few things to send to Grandma's and about 3 boxes of things to sell or donate. I decluttered the books down to two squares of the cube organizer and removed the small bookshelf entirely. The middle shelf above the door holds mostly things that are going to go, aside from the r/c truck. All of the baby toys and clothes were moved, sold, donated, or thrown out. I kept a small selection of keepsakes (first favorite book, first favorite toy, first pair of shoes, etc.) in the top left corner of the shelving. We still need to go through two more sweater boxes full of small plushes, on the top right above the door.
The shelves in the left side of the closet now hold different categories of toys: building toys, sensory toys, and on the floor, music toys and then role playing toys (pretend kitchen stuff, a doll, a toolkit, a fire helmet, etc.) The low plastic drawers contain puzzles and other small toys for imaginary play, like cars and action figures. The shelving in the far right of the closet still contains art materials, to be decluttered more thoroughly as I get a good idea of what we'll use. (I am sort of banking on there being a day where craft materials are decluttered.) Now that it's accessible, I plan to have Sam do more arts and crafts at home.
I got rid of a ton of redundant toys, and when the boys got back from the park, Sam jumped right in to play with his "new" toys. I like the idea of rotating a small selection of toys from week to week, so I will probably just pick one or two toys from each category and have those accessible. The closet will remain locked for the time being. Eventually we may create a playroom elsewhere and have Sam's bed actually in his room. What a concept. At that point, we'll have to move his dresser back in and have his closet available to him. I bought a shelf to put in, so that we could hang clothing in there (the closet has no rod), but never installed it. There are lots of pegs and hooks, though, so I'm making use of them to store backpacks in the meantime.
Anyhow. It was a pain, and took me all afternoon, but at least it's done. Onward! #LWSLClutterFree
No comments:
Post a Comment