Temporary Results

This is what the kids' shared room has looked like for the past year and a half. Stuffed full of hot wheels cars and art supplies and books, any tiny disorganization would throw it into such chaos that they really could not clean it themselves, and then it overflowed into the hallway and the living room and other common living spaces of the house.

When we bought this house and the kids were tiny people and we put them together in the smallest bedroom we had, we knew we couldn't keep things that way forever. We had big plans, even then, for when the kids outgrew the shared room.

There is room, upstairs, for a master bedroom. There is the cool feature of the slanted old chimney, from some long ago torn out fireplace, to work with. We have always envisioned a big dormer window in the roof and, you know, our own bathroom up there. As you can see, that is no small project. It involves reinforcing floor beams and roof joists. And building a staircase. More than a can of paint, anyway.

We have other plans, too. I'd like to push out the back wall of the house and dig a bigger basement underneath, to add working space to the kitchen/dining room, turn our current bedroom into a library/den, and give us a less creepy place to hang out during the multiple tornado warnings we have here in the spring.

We have a lot of books. Most of them are still in boxes in the barn. It makes me so sad.

I'm perfectly happy that we can't afford to do all that stuff right now. It sounds exhausting. I am content in this moment to focus on smaller projects that make a big difference. Moving the kids was one such project.

This is our former office, now known as the girl's room. She and I are spending a lot of time looking at pictures of bedrooms and talking about paint shades and curtain fabric and though I would have liked to have painted it when we moved her, I'm happy to put that off as well.

The girl is over the moon about this room. Most of her quilts had been stored in closets since we moved out of our old house, so she didn't know she had all these wonderful cozy things to work with. Good thing she had some, too, because hers is the coldest room in the house.

She got the rocking chair that no longer fit in the living room and the bookshelf from the old bedroom. She got privacy, her own desk, and room to do her crafts. She needs a dresser that fits in her closet, and then we will be all set.

The boy stayed in the old room, and had a lot more trepidation about the process. He was worried it would be scary to sleep alone in there. He loves his sister and didn't want her to leave him. It's hard on him that she's growing up sooner than he is, and he doesn't like change very much at all. There were some tears.

However, he was happy to get the special grown up desk. He is under strict orders not to use markers or paint or stickers on that desk. We'll see how well he does. He turned the mail slot features into parking garages for his favorite hot wheels. He likes the space in the middle of the floor to set up train and car tracks that he doesn't have to take down every day. He was the first to close his door and tell us, delighted, that we were not allowed in.

He got the bookshelf I was using in the hallway and the CD player. I was pretty shocked to realize that their book collection filled an entire second bookshelf. No wonder their room was a mess all the time. Since I won't allow him to use the fancy desk for crafts and coloring, he kept the kids table for such projects.

Like Charlie Brown's friend Linus, our boy loves soft, fleecy blankets, and because of that, he has had most of his out of storage and in bed with him since birth. But I did dig up some extras to give him a cozy rocker to read in also.

He wants a midnight blue accent wall with a glow in the dark moon and stars on it. I told him that sounded fine to me.

I really thought that giving the kids their own rooms would make the house less comfortable. I thought the office stuff would crowd the living room too much and that I would wish the computer was still in a room away from the bustle and chaos of our only living area.

In fact, the computer stuff takes up far less room than I thought, and if I want to use a computer away from the noise of the wii or the T.V., our new wifi router makes it possible for me to take my seldom used laptop into the kitchen or our bedroom and get some peace and quiet that way.

The living room is now less crowded, because the kids are no longer allowed to bring their stuff out here. Without the clutter of My Little Ponies and Thomas tracks, the room is much more comfortable. The kids, still enthralled with the newness of it all, have kept their rooms clean and beds made for three days straight now. This might be some kind of record.

These small changes have made everything easier here on the little farm. Thank goodness.