Day 28 of the Great Declutter - Attacking the Boys' Room

A few weeks ago, while Caleb and Noah were at Cub Scout camp, I decided it was time to attack their room.


It was pretty much the definition of cluttered.

Bookshelves crammed with total randomness.

Bedside tables that were threatening to spill over.

And dresser tops that were just plain hideous.

I've heard from so many people that what they really struggle with is the clutter that other people bring to their lives.  And I so get that.

But I realized early on in doing this was that the key to success would be being ruthless.  If I didn't know what something was, if I hadn't seem them play with it in months, if it was broken, of if it was so buried they couldn't use if it they wanted to, it needed to go away.

Starting with this, their bedside drawer.  Filled with flashcards (pretty sure they know how to recognize a hat and a mouse lifting a suitcase now (???)), some toy tongs, and a fake snake.  Things that every boy has to have at his fingertips next to his bed.

I got rid of all of it.

Leaving behind this.

Yup.  A tooth.  Why it was in there I have no idea.  Don't know which boy it belongs to either.  And while it feels a bit odd to throw away a tooth, I did.

A big part of the problem as I went through their room were all the books.  Sounds like a good problem to have.  But they still had board books in there.  And early readers.  And freebie books from the doctor's office.  I sorted them out, saved the good ones for Eli and donated the rest.

But I wasn't done before I found this.  Yes, back behind all of those belching books I found this guy.

What is he?

Why a potholder of course.  And again, what 7- or 8-year-old boy doesn't need one of those at the ready.

After sorting through all of that, I ended up with a bedside table that looked like this.  The drawer is now used for the books they are actively reading.  And the base became a great place to shove stuffed animals.

Moving on the the main bookshelf.

All kinds of good stuff here.

Like entire armies of little things that don't have anything to do with one another.

Or yes, yet another part of a matryoshka doll.

Toss.  Put away.  Laugh at.  Toss.  Toss.

Having cleared out all of the baby and toddler books, removed broken pieces and disbanding the armies, I had two open shelves.  Rather than leave tons of random "But Mooooommmm, I love this!" memorabilia out on the dressers for me to see every time I walked by, I gave them each a shelf to store their special things on.

Doing this limits their ability to have those things spilling all over the room.  And I was able to reduce the clutter on their dressers, too.

In the end, I got rid of 8 pounds of true clutter.  And another 20 pounds of books.

The best part?  They got home.  They noticed how clean the room was.  They have (for the most part) kept it that way.  And they have not missed nor noticed a single missing thing.

Not even this missing (missing) tooth.  Well Noah still has a gap in his top row, but I really don't think he was planning to put it back.

And when it was all done, I brought my grand total to 473 pounds of clutter gone!