The Rearranging of the Rooms

The other day, while sitting at my computer, I received a message that was sent special delivery in an envelope. This was that message:
(translation, for all of you who do not have small children in your house: "Can Me and Riley share a room and mine is the play room it could be a project for the family please please please please PLEASE !!!!!!!!!)

Accompanied by that note was a crayon for marking my selection, as well as a rendering of the final product:

That was their bunk bed :). The two of them almost always are sleeping in the same room, so actually it wasn't that bad of an idea.

We discussed it and I thought it would be a fine idea, especially since they both wanted it so much. But there would be a few changes. We didn't want them to have bunk beds - in fact, we were already discussing removing the loft from Riley's room and replacing it with a big boy bed anyway. So we would put two twin beds in Riley's room and we made Violet's room the play room. We had special plans for the loft bed...

And here is the result of The Rearranging of the Rooms... first, Violet's room (now the playroom)

(click on any image to see it, and the captions, better)



And Riley's room, turned the Sleeping Room...
The biggest accomplishment was the organization of the closet. How was I supposed to go from a HUGE closet and dresser in Violet's room and another closet in dresser in Riley's room to JUST a closet for BOTH kids and make it work?? Well, miraculously, we did. Part of the success on it was that the kids' closets were both very poorly organized before. Violet never actually *used* her dresser, instead the clothes were usually piled in front of it because the drawers were just too shallow. And Riley's closet was mostly toys and games, which were now neatly stowed away in the playroom. We did a huge purge of clothes and toys as well, and that really helped. And shoes were no longer cluttering the closet floors... instead the kids each have a bin at the foot of their bed for their shoes.
The two white little dressers are actually Violet's old nightstands. On either side of them are the closet organizers that had been in Riley's closet. We bought two pieces of melamine shelving at Home Depot (okay, three, but that was cause Rick accidentally cut the first one wrong)... one for the dressers and one for above the shelving units. All the colored bins were from Target. I got pinks and purples for Violet, blues and greens for Riley. The white bins were from Target, too, and the big bins on the top shelf were ones we already had.

The last thing I need to do to make the rooms complete is to label everything so that the kids no know EXACTLY where things go. It's been almost 2 weeks now, and the kids have actually done a great job at keeping everything well organized and put away. It's amazing what a good system of organization can do for my sanity!