I suggested to Liv that it may be a good idea to change her room around and take out some toys to make it easier to tidy and give her more playing room and to my shock she was really enthusiastic. I took advantage of her being out with my mum this afternoon and got Ed to help my do a bit of judicious moving of furniture.
The bookcase was moved to the living room. This was my most important change. The case is full of books that belong to Abi and Johnny, only the bottom shelf had Livi's books on. The other two were constantly barging into her room to get a book and left books all over the floor and all higgly-piggly on the shelf. Now it is in the living room they don't have to invade her privacy and I like the extra bookshelf in the room. It makes it look like a library and that has to be a good thing - right?! She has a basket in her room with about 10 books in that she has chosen and she is free to swap them as she wants to. Hopefully that will keep the book monster at bay!
The next thing I did was to pull everything out from under the bed. There were suitcases and boxes of toys and bags of clothes and lots of stuff that Livi had stuffed under rather than put away. I vacuumed as I went and bagged the rubbish, put anything that could be stored elsewhere out on the landing. Finally I sorted out the toys that Livi loves to play with and put them on the bed, everything else went into a bin liner (or two) and went straight into the loft, before she saw. If she misses anything I will get it back down, but somehow I don't think she will. We'll see!
Finally, I moved the furniture around to make it look completely different and put out a small selection of toys on the shelf and in the pink/purple bins. Compared to what my mother had as a little girl it is still a huge amount. Compared to what her friends have it is meagre.
She was asleep in bed when I took these photos so I had to be quick and could not take the best pictures in the world, however, compared to the "before" photo you can still see the improvement!
3 comments:
Bravo!!!!! Way to go you! That is a ton of work, but I am sure Livi will be happier! I find that when Bunny agrees to putting toys away, then its really time to clean out! She never misses the toys that I put away!
It looks great! I love your respectful approach to the messy room issue. I really could have used that sort of help when I was Livi's age - I'm still organizationally inept.
I bet she loves it. You did well to do so much in a day. I am now itching to make her a little "Livi" bunting for that newly styled room! Don't tell her in case I take an age to get to it but it's on my list .
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