The Great Room Swapping of 2011

After getting fed up with cleaning up toy messes in the living room countless times per day, I removed all toys (except Tristan's Legos) to the boys bedroom last week. Then anytime they wanted to play, I would tell them to go play in their room. So, for 3 days I didn't have to clean up any toy messes in the living room and it was heavenly! But then every time I would go into the boys room I would feel sad for them because their room is so small, and they seemed crammed in there. Meanwhile, our very large bedroom was home to our bed and clothes and not really used during the day. Light Bulb! So, Saturday, I swapped rooms with them. And throughout the week this week I have been finishing up odds and ends. Today, we finally got Tristan's Legos into their new bedroom. It is so awesome to have an adult-looking living room. It is so awesome to see them playing together and separately in their room. They make huge messes in there and there is still room for them to play and make more messes. And it cleans up quickly, just once a day (or even every other day) while the rest of the house stays clean! I'm really very happy about this. And so are the boys.

This was the first night of the swap, and Tristan was already happily playing in there.

The room is really a lot bigger than it looks. Especially if you are as short as a kid. There's a whole little reading nook at the foot of the bed. You can see the bookshelf in this picture but you can't see the space in front of it.

We even swapped the bedroom doors so that the cute Animal Welcome painting is on the boys room door. We took our clothes out of the dresser and put toys in it instead. As you can see, Tristan covered it with stickers so that there would be no mistake that the drawers have toys in them now.

Our new little room is working fabulously, even if the bed fills up almost the whole floor space.

See! No toys in the living room! Isn't it great?