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I am very excited (and a little scared) to be taking on this next project. As you probably already know, I focus a lot on my need to declutter and organize, but decorating rarely ever gets done. It’s hard impossible to decorate and create beautiful rooms around clutter!
However, I’m determined to create a more beautiful, organized home, and what better way than with an ambitious challenge?!
I’ve decided to participate in the One Room Challenge, which is hosted twice a year by Linda at Calling it Home. She’s been hosting the challenge for ten years now, and more than a thousand rooms have been transformed! I can’t wait to add one of mine to that list.
I’ve decided to focus on my 7 1/2 ( that half is very important!) year old daughter’s bedroom and will be sharing updates here on the blog every Thursday.
Our home has no shortage of rooms in desperate need of attention, but after doing my son’s room this past summer the other kids were really anxious for me to do their rooms as well. We are getting ready to welcome our fifth child into the family in December, but she’s only our second girl so I wanted to do something for our first daughter to let her know how special she is to us and will always be even if there’s another little girl in our home. Thankfully, she hasn’t expressed any jealousy or worry. She’s thrilled to be getting a little sister (and cried when she found out she was so happy!), but I still want to do something to make her feel special.
Now I wish I had a beautiful plan to share with you right now, but that will be coming shortly. I want my daughter to have an active role in decorating her room, and we’re still trying to nail down our ideas. We also have a good amount of work to do before we can do any decorating. Remember that, “It’s hard to create a beautiful room around clutter” thing I mentioned earlier? Yeah, her room is a mess! And just in case you’re thinking, “Oh how bad could it really be?” here’s a sneak peek of what we’re starting with.
This is what you see when you enter my daughter’s bedroom.
We moved into this house four and a half years ago, and my poor daughter’s bounced all over the house. This is her third bedroom! We’ve had a fourth baby since moving into this house, which caused us to move her to the basement. Then my mother-in-law moved in with us last year so she took the basement bedroom, and my daughter was moved upstairs to the unused exercise room.
This room is long and narrow (about 10 x 29 feet!) with only one small window, and it’s directly above our garage. It isn’t ideal, but we’re working with what we’ve got. As you can see, we’ve got a nice mix of workout equipment and toy clutter to work through before anything else can be done. (You can probably guess what next week’s post will be about!)
I’m also not sure how in the world we’re going to get this huge piece of equipment of out that room. It was generously left by the previous owners. We agreed to keep it thinking we’d use it, but believe it or not, moving into a new house doesn’t make you a new person! (Shocking, right?! haha) I think it’s been used two, maybe three, times max so it’s time to go!
This punching bag was another gift from the previous owners (aka, they didn’t want to have to move it), and it too is rarely used. This is a view from the workout equipment back into the room and towards her door.
The tv was put up there for working out, but isn’t hooked up (hence all the junk around it. Plus, we’re mean parents and don’t let our kids have tvs in their bedrooms. By the looks of things, that’s the only thing we don’t allow in their rooms! haha).
I’ll be honest, I HATE sharing these pictures. It’s painful to put out into the blogosphere how horrible I’ve allowed this room to become, but I guess the upside is you know I’m nothing if not honest. Obviously, this did not happen overnight, but I don’t blame my daughter for this at all. This is just the result of being disorganized, having too much stuff, and nothing really having a home.
I can’t wait to share the progress we make in this room with you, and I hope you’ll follow along each Thursday. It can only get better from here, right?! I’ll see you then. 🙂
Yay! Can wait to see whar you do with the room! I’ll be rainy part next year hopefully!
Thank you! Given that I have no idea what that’s going to be yet, I can’t wait to see what I do with it either! lol
You definitely have your hands full! Love that you are co-ordinating ideas with your daughter. It’s a memory she will have for years. It is inspirational to see the pictures. Good for me to see and if you can tackle this project while expecting another, I can handle my challenges as well. Thank you for sharing.
Hands full, arms full, legs full… every appendage, at this point, is overflowing! lol She’s very excited to have a room makeover. We just worked on cleaning up her room (made great progress is a surprisingly small-ish amount of time!), and she said she can’t wait for it to be done. It’s going to be a lot of fun… eventually, I think. 🙂
I would put the exercise equipment up for sale, and let the buyers move it out of the room.
We’re definitely going to try to sell it, but I’m not sure I want strangers in my house. I feel totally weird about that. Maybe I’d feel better if I stopped watching 48 hours and other crime shows for a little while lol, but yeah, we’re definitely going to try to sell it.
Thanks for sharing this! We recently moved and deliberately downsized. We gave up a playroom for our girls and it’s been hard to keep our “no tv, no toys” rule for the girls rooms. I can’t wait to see your ideas since for now they do have an unfinished space in the basement only half set up. We did create a makeshift windows seat (using some padded storage bins and ikea shelves) for my youngest. And painted and added new furniture. Now to sell the old and get it out of here! We’ve had good success with freecycle and craigslist previously. But not sure what to do in our new neighborhood. So I’d also love to see what you do with your “donations” too! lol.We are a bit stuck now and I appreciate your commitment to helping everyone else. You are so great at being real! Thanks so much!
Thank you! Sometimes I wonder if I’m a little too real lol, but I figure there’s gotta be someone out there who can relate to a real (messy) house vs. pinterest perfection. I am a little anxious about how I’m going to create storage in her room because she doesn’t have any right now, but hopefully we’ll figure something out. I love those ikea storage bins and shelves, and I’m definitely going to have to try craigslist and freecycle. I can’t wait to get this stuff out of our house! Thanks so much for visiting, Suzanne.
I so Wish I could come take the weight machine and
punching bag out of your way~!
I have 2 Boys, one pays to go workout and is always asking for weights for gifts,
the other asked for a punching bag, but I checked and couldn’t afford one.
I am sure you could sell them, asking the person buying to bring help to remove them because of their bulkiness and weight.
I so look forward to your remodel for your daughter’s room.
{{Hugs}} to You for all You Do~!
Tammy 🙂
I wish you could too, Tammy! I’m going to try to sell them as soon as the room is clean enough to get some good pictures! lol Thanks so much for stopping by and for your encouraging words. They made my day 🙂
Wow you have your hands full with 4 kids and another on the way!! I would suggest you keep the weight machine and punching bag because you have boys, and once they reach high school will be very interested in using it, at least my two were. Maybe it can go in the basement or garage. They are expensive to replace. And kudos to No TVs in the kids rooms, I did the same thing. Good luck with the makeover 🙂
I figured they could just use each other as punching bags. Kidding! Kidding, totally kidding. We do have a 14 year old who showed some interest in the punching bag when we first moved in, but not much since. I’ll have to think about it because we could make a workout room in our basement, and I’d like to get our elliptical out of our bedroom. Either way, I know it has to leave my poor daughter’s room asap! 🙂
Excited to see the transformation! I am remodeling my master bathroom for the ORC and love watching everyone elses projects!
I’m so jealous! My master bathroom is in desperate need of some tlc. Have you participated in the ORC before? This is my first time. I’m excited! I just hope I can get it done in time. 🙂
I participated last fall and now I am addicted!
I’ve only just started, but I can definitely see how this could be addictive!