And we’re back! Day 2 of the 31 Day Challenge.
Today we’re talking about making space.
Honestly, this was the part that scared me most when dad asked to move in. We live in a fairly large, two-story house with five bedrooms. At the time, our bedrooms were being used like this: Girl’s Room, Boy’s Room, Playroom/Office, Owen’s Room, Master Bedroom.
They were all full. And I mean literally full. We had so much stuff!
When Bryan and I tried to start planning, we decided it made the most sense to get rid of the office/playroom.
Here’s a picture of what it looked like before:
We created a corner in our upstairs hall area for our new office. Previously, this space had been devoted to bookshelves for kids. We purged, and purged, and purged some more. Books, toys, office supplies, so many things that we were just hanging onto. They got donated, or given away, or trashed.
This freed up space, and we moved our desk upstairs. (That was hard!)
Once we had a new office figured out, we worked on making the boy’s room upstairs into the playroom/kid’s library. We moved Jeffrey back in with Owen (bunk beds) and Simon went in a playpen in the girls’ room.
We emptied out the former playroom, making room for Dad.
After it was empty, we gave it a good scrubbing, and helped him to move in. His stuff was in tubs for quite a while, but at least he was there, and had a room of his own.
Since moving the desk, we’ve decided we like having the desk in the hall. It keeps us on top of purging more frequently. When we had a separate office, it was too easy to just shut the door and forget about the mess. When we walk by the mess several times a day, it’s very motivating to keep it not so messy.
We’ve also continued the purging process, and have seriously reduced the amount of junk in the home. (Trust me though–we still have a lot of progress to make!)
If you have a parent living with you, how did you make room? Did you have to creatively make a new space for stuff like we did? I’d love to hear how you made it work!
[…] Yesterday we talked about making space in the house for a parent to move in. […]