A Quasi-Victory

My junk room has been cleared out and re-purposed as an American Girl bunker/Lego showcase/fantasy science lab. This room had its first incarnation as a junk room right after we moved it, then it was Emma’s bedroom. After I quit teaching we moved her to the other bedroom, which was bigger, and the room became my office. But it felt a little confining, and I let it become overrun by books and papers. So I moved my desk and most of my books and papers down into our home library. Since I now work in a shared family space, which is also the first room you see when you walk into the house, I’m motivated to keep it neat.

Rooms without a true purpose are more prone to becoming junk rooms, I’ve learned. After I relocated my desk, the room again became the easiest place to stash stuff we didn’t know where else to put. It was a definite disaster.

I cannot claim a full victory at this point because a lot of the items are now sitting in baskets and totes, waiting for me to deal with them. They’re out of the space but still have no permanent home. I really need to break this habit of shuffling clutter without dealing with it.

Emma is pretty good about keeping her bedroom neat, and so far she’s been pretty good about keeping her playroom neat.I moved her doll furniture out of her bedroom, as well as a second bookshelf, so now she has good storage in both room.

Lab2

This part of the room is devoted to dolls.

Though she is on a big science kick, wanting to make potions and blow stuff up, so we may need to talk about what’s acceptable to do in there and what’s not. I don’t want to have to clean dinosaur snot out of the rug.

LabDoor

In case we forget the room’s new purpose.

I realized while writing this that I’ve gained proficiency in giving myself projects- reorganizing books and now getting rid of the baskets of stuff from the now-former junk room-but thus far not very good at getting those projects done! So next week there will be definite updates on those areas. Have a great weekend!

‘Lab’ table, reading corner and doll spa