Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Purging!

Some of you saw the picture of my girls in their playroom that ran in Southern Living a few months ago. The picture was actually taken a couple of years ago, and Julia, my youngest, starts kindergarten next week. Whoa!

This is not a post about how sad I am that my baby is growing up. I've got a little of that going on . . . but mostly I'm looking forward to having big blocks of time to write and paint. Significant time. MY time.

My house has been absolutely driving me crazy for a while. Happy meal toys are stuffed in the cracks in the floor boards, playdough is oozing like mortar from holes in our walls, stacks of paper and art projects threaten to topple over and cause serious bodily harm if they are not whacked down. Soon.

I was going to wait until the kids started school next week to start a massive cleaning out binge, but then, I realized . . . do I really want to spend a week of my writing time cleaning and organizing?? Uh, no. So . . . here's what our playroom used to look like.


Here's what it looks like this morning.

I will post "after" pictures later. I'm waiting on some large men to come and help me move some large furniture, and I have a tiny construction project to tackle . . . and a desk to paint (one BIG reason for the reorg is to get the kid's computer downstairs where I can see what's going on).

It feels good to purge. And, my kids are helping me fill donation boxes with toys they no longer play with (I wasn't sure how well this would work, and we've had a few battles . . . but overall it's been fine).

Now, back to my rake.

sf

16 comments:

Weronika Janczuk said...

Sarah -- I couldn't help but laugh. Your children are adorable, the play room looks like a kid's dream place. I'm jealous of them!

I wish you and your kids the best of luck as school rolls around. I can't believe you start so early! I go back the second week of September.

Thanks for sharing, and I hope you're having a great week.

StaffPicks said...

Looks like you're setting up for a bonfire! |:~)

Kimberly Derting said...

Will you come design a playroom for me??? I promise not to mess it up!

Corey Schwartz said...

Oh, ha ha! Good luck!

lisa and laura said...

I love seeing that even perfect magazine like playrooms end up looking like that. Seriously. This makes my heart happy.

And I just did a monumental toy purge last week. Two HUGE garbage bags full of plastic crap all given to charity. It felt good on so many levels.

Elana Johnson said...

Good luck with all of that. It looks like my garage. I think we filled an entire dumpster with stuff. Seriously.

Hardygirl said...

My van is full of stuff to donate--I mean FULL!!

Plus, I filled up a couple of huge garbage cans.

The large men (my husband and his business partner) moved the large furniture today. Things are looking better, but we're a good ways away from the "after" picture.

I'm trying to figure out how to raise the table with some sort of leg extensions. It's a great table for games, etc.--we're just all getting to the point of needing to sit in real chairs instead of the kid-sized ones.

Anyway, it's good to purge. I was going to wait until the kids went to school to do the deed, but I want to be WORKING when they hit the books. Not crawling on my belly looking for marbles and barbie shoes.

sf

Little Ms J said...

Purge, sister!

Glad to see you back!

storyqueen said...

We have all our computers downstairs, in the open (except for the college student.....her laptop goes everywhere.) I can't recommend it enough!

When my oldest two were little, we had a sunroom which became the toy room. Oh those were the days! The great thing was that no matter how big of a mess they made in the toy room, they always had a nice, clean room to sleep in.

No sun room in this house=toys EVERYWHERE (youngest child).

Good Luck!

shelley

Sherrie Petersen said...

I'm so glad to see that I'm not the only one being overwhelmed by childhood peraphenalia! Those magazine shots always make me feel so inadequate, so thank you for keeping it real!

Hardygirl said...

Yes! The purge is so good, Miss J. !! I think I needed a little cleaning out time--kind of like starting the new year fresh.

Shelley, I love having the "toy" room. When we bought our house, it had been cut into three one-bedroom apartments (I'll post those "before" pix sometime), so we had three kitchens. This room was one of the kitchens. It looks big in pictures because of all of the windows, but the room is actually barely 9 x 10 feet. It is right off of our family room, and I let the girls do whatever they want in there (spill paint, play do, etc.). And, I can shut the door!!! Sorry you lost your toy room. All that STUFF can make a girl crazy.

Ha Solvang! I wish you could have seen my house when the photographers arrived -- SIX HOURS EARLY!! There was literally an entire box of lucky charms spewed all over my kitchen which was the room that they actually came to photograph. They thought it was funny, and while I was cleaning up the cheerios they photographed other rooms saying, "Don't worry, we'll just photoshop out the dirt and stuff."

The girls had been playing in the playroom all day, and they thought they were so cute. So, we raked out the room (what you can't see is the huge mess just behind the picture), and the girls posed for pix.

sf

Stephanie Faris said...

Well it may be messy but it's absolutely adorable! I'd love to have a room like that in my house...messy or not!

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Wendy said...

I wish we had a playroom! Lovely. I have a corner of my living room that looks like that where the boys pile stuff on their train table!

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cristen said...

love the before and after photos!

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