May 24 2018

Reading Room Project

In case you haven’t heard, Hubby and I are officially empty nesters again, but this time it seems to be permanent. Last time, it was because the kids had gone off to college. Now, our son has a house he bought over a year ago and our daughter has signed a lease for an apartment so she is committed elsewhere for at least a year. We asked her to empty her room because we had plans for it.

Six or more weeks later, it still looked like this, and one Saturday we went up to clear off the desk so we could grow plants on it in front of the window. Before we started, we asked her to stop by after work on Sunday evening because we would have a box or two for her.

Before…

This shot was taken from the doorway. She had taken the stuff she knew she wanted out but wasn’t sure what to do with the rest. There didn’t seem to be any sort of system, but she later told us that some boxes were partially filled with items to donate to charity.

See that desk in front of the double window? That is all we were planning on clearing off. Just so Hubby could put some plants on it. He even asked if I thought clearing the desk and her seeing it with plants on it would give her the hint that we wanted her to finish cleaning it out.

Honestly, that was all we intended to do. We cleared the desk and somehow got carried away. We didn’t mean to pack up her stuff, but we just found ourselves saying well this and this could go in that box then it would be full. We could pack the soft items in the duffle, and pack some breakables between the layers. We started to see real improvement in the room and that spurred us on. We, at some point, must have consciously made the decision to take over the room and clean it out, but I think that was after hubby had carried several loads of packed up stuff down to the entry hall where she would be able to easily load it into her car. We thought she would be thrilled that we had done so much of the work for her and all she had to do was carry it out to her car.

Apparently, it is more difficult than we ever imagined on a kid to see her childhood room dismantled, boxed and ready to load. We had the room itself basically packed up and emptied as much as we could and we swept all the dust from behind and under furniture and I took a picture because it was a lot of dust and we felt so accomplished getting so much done and cleaning enough to gather so much dust.

Later, as I was looking through the pictures my brain spied this little friend so I played with the photo to draw what I was seeing over it in case others didn’t have brains that were as quirky as mine.

After…

So, when two adults with addictive personalities work together on a project, big things can happen in a very short period of time. We decided we didn’t want a sitting room, so much as a reading room or library type room. Hubby still planned to use the sun coming in through the windows in the morning to help his houseplants and seeds grow, but it became so much more.

Hubby decided he wanted to actually be able to see out the windows, so he got busy and washed them inside and then got the big extension ladder out and cleaned the outsides too! Gotta love a man who does windows! He also took the broken screens and storm windows out and found some in the master bedroom that we could switch them out with. We will deal with them all at once when we get to that room.

Two days in one weekend made all the difference in this room. You should have seen the look on the kid’s face when she stopped in on Sunday after work and saw the pile of her stuff waiting in the entry hall. She was in shock. Guess we should have warned her but she was out of town and then she was at work, and we knew she was already planning to stop by after work. The desk was further cleaned and now actually does have plants on it.

What’s next?

We ended up pretty much destroying the storage area that our landing had become in the process of unloading and moving the bookshelves into our new reading room. Stay tuned to see the before and after details of that area in a future post.

This little desk cleaning was the start of something huge in our house. By Tuesday of the next week, Hubby texted me admitting he was ready to clean another room and asking me if we could do it again that weekend. So we have decided to reclaim our home one room at a time and lucky for you we will bring you along for the ride! Make sure you don’t miss any of it. Sign up for the email list using the form at the top right of the page and we will send an email announcing each post. You will not believe we two fifty-something empty nesters can accomplish on a non-existent budget with a little time and some good old-fashioned elbow grease. Next up is the landing transformation.

Where to start…

If you think a room is too messy to even get started, just go in with the goal to work for 15 minutes. If even that seems overwhelming, go in and grab a box and take it out of the room to sort it. Starting is harder than anything in these situations.

If you still can’t handle it and find you need a little help, you can Hire Me to help you with your organizing projects. Don’t worry about where you are, we can work something out. I know what it is like to be overwhelmed by areas of your home. I also know what it is like to love spending time in a home that you have cleaned and decluttered and made into your own personal oasis. It can happen, but first, you have to start.

I know what it is like to be overwhelmed by areas of your home & what it's like to love spending time in a clean, decluttered home that is your own personal oasis. It can happen, but first, you have to start. Click To Tweet

Don’t sit there being overwhelmed! Set a timer for 15 minutes (there is a timer on every cell phone) and just do something. Do nothing else for that 15 minutes of focused time. When the timer goes off, take a break and get your beverage of choice and think about how much more is done than there was 15 minutes ago. If you are feeling up to it after your liquid refreshment, set that timer again. Tomorrow you will be so glad you started today! You CAN do this, I promise!