Why oh why??

Why do I get these insane ideas? Today we (Alex and I) got the brilliant idea to have him, the little ones, and the playroom all change rooms. So guess what we spent the day doing? Yes, moving rooms.

I was inspired by my friend Denise at There's Always Room for One More to clean up my kitchen. After her post about the constant collection of paperwork, I realized my kitchen looked the same. So, we spent the morning cleaning the counters, island, oven, cooktop, etc. We pitched tons of papers from school. Shh, don't tell the girls. But when all was said and done, the kitchen looked pretty nice!



So the clean kitchen prompted me to think about cleaning further. Alex had been asking to move to another room but nothing seemed to make sense. He has the downstairs bedroom with a full bath right outside his door. Problem is, that bathroom is used by everyone who comes to visit. It needs to be clean. Can he handle that? No. Finally told him that if he couldn't keep it clean, he'd need to change rooms. Our solution was essentially an apple-basket turnover. We decided to move him upstairs to where the little girls were (to a room with no cable, gasp)!, move them across the hall into what was their playroom, and move the playroom downstairs. So Alex is now sharing a bathroom with the little ones but that means the downstairs bath is clean all the time. Abby keeps saying that the downstairs bathroom isn't anyone's anymore!!

Our adventures started just after mommy's nap time. After all, it's Saturday so that takes precedent. We started by moving all the toys from the playroom out into the upstairs hallway. We couldn't get down the hall to our bedroom all afternoon. :-)

If you look closely down the hall, you'll notice the unfolded laundry in the basket. Yep, never got around to that either. In fact, this morning the girls came in at 6:30 to haul out the baskets in search of clean underwear. Bad mommy.

We had a twin bed in the playroom just because it wouldn't fit anywhere else. Well, we ran out of room in the hallway for stuff so it ended up in the bathroom.

Next step, empty out the girls room. Alex and I hauled things across the hallway until I was happy with the results.
The empty room--finally!!

Scenes from the new room


Yes, the closet is empty. They wear so many pants and jeans, that nothing ever gets hung up in the closet!! But, we are due for a fall/winter shopping trip.

Okay, so now we had one finished room, one room in the hallway, one room empty, and one needing to move. Alex's room, well, clearly belongs to a teenager.
Don't you love the mess? Me neither.

We began moving Alex's stuff into the living room to make the trek upstairs.

At the same time, Anna Grace and Abby were losing patience with the activities. After all, their toys were in the middle of the hallway and unplayable. We resorted to an art activity in the kitchen. Fortunately, they remained focused for a bit---that is until Anna Grace dropped her whole necklace and sent beads flying. Oh well. She had to make it again but it kept her focused for 15 more minutes!


At this same time, Dave and Alex continued to move his room upstairs piece by piece.

Look what we found under the bed. Don't you just love teenage boys?

I got the brilliant idea to start moving toys downstairs at the same time Alex was moving upstairs. For a while there, the living room was a complete disaster.

But shortly thereafter, we had things straightened out. There are no pictures hung up in any of the "new" rooms right now. Perhaps tomorrow.

Alex's room was still in progress when I put away the camera. He thought I was crazy to keep a photo log of the day. But we've done this same move before without pictures. I felt it was necessary. :-)

After a great dinner of ribs, corn on the cob, and tater tots, the little ones read stories with daddy in their new playroom.

They are now in their new room hopefully going to sleep, Alex is downstairs in the office playing guitar, and Katie is at a senior campout for the night. Maybe things will be quiet around here tonight!! After the busy day, I would love a quiet night. And, we never got around to cleaning all the bathrooms so that's on the agenda for tomorrow after our church picnic. Don't you wish you lived here? You could be on tomorrow's cleaning crew! I am sure the kids won't be very happy about it. :-)