In our old house, my two older boys had been crammed together in a fairly small room. In our new house, they can each have their own space, which is great.
However, I felt like my eldest’s room wasn’t necessarily living up to its potential. It has lots of light. We bought furniture for it from the previous owners, and bought an additional book case and desk, but things weren’t terribly well-organized. Or, they were, but it was hard to maintain them that way. My son is busy and he’s also grown a lot in the past few years, which means he’s grown out of a lot of clothes — sometimes clothes I swear I’d just bought a few months before. It’s hard to stay current on that, plus old school notebooks/notepaper, etc.
He’s been away for the last three weeks at camp, so with his permission, our house manager and I have been busy upgrading the space. (I don’t have permission for pictures yet — hopefully later! But this is why this isn’t a design blog haha).
First order of business: clearing out the too-small clothes. The good news is that because he is at camp, we’re pretty sure he took his favorite things with him. So a lot of the other things could be dispatched to some giant Rubbermaid-type containers, ready for the 14-year-old to “shop” if he desires. (He is also gone, so we’ll have to wait on that.) Trash was removed, books put on the shelf, etc.
We purchased a rug, so that is now grounding the space around his bed. Also on the decor front: framing posters! Several years ago, right before we moved into the house, he received a number of movie posters as a Christmas present. We were going to frame these and put them up and then just…didn’t. But that finally happened and they are being delivered today, so that is going to make the space look a lot more coherent.
We also got some new lamps, which give the bedroom a much more homey glow. Clear off some horizontal surfaces and the place looks a lot better. I’m looking forward to the big reveal when he comes home (though given that he’s getting home after midnight maybe it will be more of a wake up in the morning reveal).
Of course, I’m also realizing we should have done this a lot earlier. He’s likely going away to college in approximately 13 months. But I assume he’ll come home for vacations and long weekends so it will be good to have a more attractive space to welcome him home.
I hope he okays pictures because I LOVE room overhauls.
We have two bedrooms that still need a major facelift in our house, but the two we’ve already done still feel like a breath of fresh air to me! There is something so calming about having a neat (or at least set up in a way it can be MADE neat…), personalized space. And how awesome you got to arrange this while he was out of town. A smoother process for you, I’m sure, and a fun surprise for him to see the finished product.
@Elisabeth – yep, fingers crossed he likes it!
All right, Ms. Laura Vanderkam. I can see what is going on here.
I consider my apartment to be relatively clutter-free. There isn’t a place that I can put pictures in the comments, so I don’t think I’ll put any photos of my apartment here.
I noticed, Ms. Laura Vanderkam, that there is a person you and I both know of, and her name is Dr. Gretchen Rubin. This means that you must’ve known the name of the book that she wrote that is all about room organization/decoration. There is also an episode of the BOBW podcast where Ms. Dana White was the guest. So, I reckon that you have as much expertise about room organization/decoration as Dr. Gretchen Rubin does, Ms. Laura Vanderkam.