I worked on my daughter’s room this morning. It was scary. Scary to anyone who might happen to pass by, but especially scary to a mom who struggles with chaos and clutter and desperately doesn’t want to pass this on to her children.
My daughter is three. She is at an age when she should be able to start picking up her room on her own, with some assistance. However, I do not consider this mess to be her fault at all because she has not been taught. In fact, she has been taught by example that it’s perfectly fine to leave messes for later, and to let them multiply until they take over the entire room.
For over a week, her room has been really bad. Really bad. She learned a few weeks ago how to climb up on the storage boxes I had in her closet and take down all of her hung-up dresses. She loves dresses and will change clothes 10 times a day on some days. She also completely emptied her toy box so that she could crawl inside and convince herself that I would never find her in there eating candy. I did find her. She also continually takes all of the sheets off of her bed to “make something” in the living room. She also has been hoarding books since her kindergartner brother has decided to be obsessed with reading every book we own. Add to this the general messiness of a room that never gets consistently picked up, and we have a total disaster.
I did the general throw-away and garage-sale-box clean up. I also, though, admitted that she is now too old for me to use her room for storage. I have stored tubs of off-season clothes, for all of the kids, in her room since we moved into this house when she was 3 months old. However, she dug through them recently (it is her room after all) and was horrified that there were boy clothes in her room. I also had used a dish barrel as a table, covered in a pretty pink toile tablecloth. It was filled with clothing as well. It was pretty, but was just taking up space and serving no legitimate purpose for her.
So I took these things out. Now the only thing on the bottom of her closet is a tub with her dress-up clothes in it. The pink castle tent is now in the area formerly occupied by the dish barrel, so it has an actual spot. My hope (I’m definitely no expert in this) is that having a definite place for the tent and for her dress up clothes will make having her clean her own room a realistic goal. Before they had a real place, it only frustrated her when I told her to pick up her room. A three year old can put things away, but she’s not old enough yet to solve the problem of where to put things. That’s my job.
And after:
View from the door before:
And after:
In case you’re wondering . . . Yes, that is my 9th grade Gold Lamay Bubble Skirt Homecoming Dress hanging in the closet. It’s an heirloom!
LOL (hug) yes, I was wondering what that gold lamé fabric was! 😉 Awesome job! I need to do my daughter's closet – her room is ok, but the kids closets….ugh!
I've made our master bed all week! We spent last weekend attacking it. It sounds like your master and mine are the same! 😛 It was nice to get all the JUNK out – we still aren't done, but got a good start! Over 6 black bags of goodwill, one to a friend, and several bags for the curb!! 🙂
uh…attacking the master bedroom, not the bed! 😛 I feel like it's a waste to make a bed when the whole room is a wreck, so we had to do something! Now I feel MUCH better – especially when the bed is made!
You are inspiring me to de-clutter my house! The pictures of daughters room reminds me of my 4 year old daughters room! Two weeks ago, I broke a toe while cleaning her room because it is so cluttered!! I just found your blog tonight and I'm so excited about how inspired it has made me! Kudos to you and thank you so much for writing this blog!!
I just wanted to thank you for sharing your struggle and journey with us! You are an inspiration and encouragement to me!
Thank you so much, Lyla!
My daughter’s room (when she was about 8 years old) was what got me moving forward with real change in the first place. I can honestly say it was really 10Xs worse than your daughter’s! She had a few years on her, lol. I had the horrible thought that my daughter might actually become a hoarder. She’s 11 now and I’ve worked with her a lot…and she’s SO MUCH better! Her room looks normal for her age now. Yay!! -Tabitha
We have that little rocking chair too! (Well, almost, but ours doesn’t have arms.) I hate it! I don’t even know where it came from, but it sits against the foot of my bed, tucked next to my shoe bench, because I’m worried that one of the kids will actually sit in it and the other kid will have their foot crushed under the rockers. At least at the present moment it doesn’t have any stray clothes on it, and I put a doll sitting there (decoratively) to discourage anything new from being deposited on it. Perhaps I should get rid of it, but it is in quite good shape and really is a cute little chair when it’s not covered up with stuff.
Thank for the reminder that it’s MY job to teach them HOW to clean up, and make sure it’s easy to do. working on my grand babies’ room. I used to keep all manner of jusnk in her closet too, till she learned how to open the door, and had EVERYTHING on the floor!! I had to kick a path, to put her in her bed for nap. Shoveled all that up. Boxed up everything while we roach fogged. Very little has gotten put back in there. AND a bar was installed across the door, that she CAN NOT remove!!