Organization: The Playroom Edition

I should have taken before and after pictures of Rowan's playroom.  I suppose I could still take the 'after' shots, but it would lack impact if you don't know what a messy disaster the room was first.

Yes, tonight I organized Rowan's room, and we cleaned up her area in the living room.  It's part of my overall plan of finding a place for everything and getting the house in semi-decent shape.

To get started, I went to Target and purchased four cloth bins.  I could have made some, and in fact had looked up tutorials to do so, but I decided this was one of those cases where my time could be better served elsewhere.  Those bins are now on the old book shelf that previously stood empty against her wall (because she always took everything off of it and we got too lazy to put it back).  One holds all her little plastic animals, one holds her wooden blocks, one holds all her balls, and the other just has a couple of wooden toys.  She has three toyboxes in addition to these bins.  One now holds all her blankets (because I don't know where else to put them and the linen closet is full), the big bench box is stuffed animals, and the small bench box is everything else.  I'm hoping that now that everything has a specific place, it will be returned there.

It looks really cluttered, but trust me, it is so much better.

I also reorganized her dresser drawers.  I read recently that you should roll clothes and store them in rows rather than in stacks.  As it turns out, that's pretty good advice.  Everything looks much neater, we don't have to dig through to find anything, and maybe now Ryan will finally start putting clothes in the appropriate drawers (seriously, how hard is it? There are only three drawers - short sleeve shirts, long sleeve shirts, pants & skirts. You'd think he could handle that.)  Also, this will help Rowan.  She's at the stage where she likes to help pick out her clothes, but her method was just reaching into the drawer and pulling out whatever was on top. Now that everything is tucked in rows, she'll have to actually look at it and make a little bit of effort.  I have a feeling she'll be wearing her monkey shirt a lot more often.