Play Room Makeover: Part 2

Step One of our playroom makeover was to downsize.

Step two was to sell off all our old toys and use the money for shelving or other items for the playroom.

So I, being the planner I am, drew out a shelf that I wanted in the playroom.  Then  my awesome husband built it for me!  And other than paint the money from the toys covered the cost of the shelves!!

The biggest tip I have for anyone wanting to take on this type of adventure is to keep your kids involved, it is their playroom after all.

So they helped us downsize, sell, build shelves, paint shelves, and reorganize all of the toys.  I always ask for their input and ideas and use some of them.  They loved the process of making the changes and they also enjoyed helping with the projects.  It was fun for all of us.  I did learn a few things though.  Kids do NOT conserve paint and they do NOT paint neatly.  Just take deep breaths and let them slop it on this is supposed to be a fun journey!

Here are some pictures of our new and improved playroom!

Play House area and an Art Easel I picked up for 3.00 at a garage sale

Reading Nook and a specific toy shelf for the baby. I wanted something that was on her level.

Barbie House (Remodel in process)

Book Closet!!  The bottom shelf is craft items that I do not want Jericho to have free access to.

Our amazing toy shelf that my awesome husband built!  I love it it is exactly what I pictured!  

So Here it is!!  We have some other plans but they may take awhile.  So far my thought is this is amazing!  The kids love it and no one has told me they are bored in quite sometime.  So over all I think it is amazing! They think it is amazing It must be amazing!

Play Room Makeover: Part 1

Going back to the basics

Earlier this week I read an article about simplifying the play room.  The playroom has always been my struggle!  It always becomes such a disaster, and if you know me you have heard me say

I HATE TOYS!!!


Well after a little thinking I decided to try a more minimalist approach and I wanted a  more Montessori style play space.

The first thing I had to do was to get my family on board.  So I had the kids make a list of five things they wanted to have in their play space and they struggled to come up with five things!!  This told me that I definitely needed to downsize.

So Step one...

Get

rid of

STUFF!!!

 My girls helped me sort through Barbies.  I chose a small tote and I told them if it didn't fit we were not keeping it. They were okay with this amazingly, we went through every item one at a time and decided what to keep and what to toss.

Above are the before photos. It was so bad! and I really didn't thing we had that many toys! Boy was I wrong!  We threw away 2 trash bags of just trash and we are going to try to sell this heap of toys! 

 Our goal is to use the money from selling the toys to get good shelving solutions and to purchase a few things like an indoor swing and a balance beam.



Following are our after pictures and a list of what we removed.

Eventually this closet will just have books, but that has to wait until we get shelves built.

Okay so pictured above is our step one progress! Yay!  All that you see pictured is all of the toys we have for five kids, and just in case you think they are deprived. They have been playing in their new space for over an hour!!

What we removed

1. About 75% of the toys we had
2. A huge table
3. two large deep toy boxes

So what is next?  First sell these toys! But really step two is shelving.

I cant wait to update you on more progress!