Home Tour: The Boys' Room

Step into our home!  Don't mind the kitchen and den...we'll pay attention to those later.  Instead, head right up the stairs to the sleeping floor.  At the top of the stairwell, you'll find the boys' room!  

This room overlooks a mile-long park with two playgrounds, a splash pad, basketball courts, tennis courts, volleyball courts, an outdoor concert stage, and a two-mile paved loop that sure would be great for those bikes we plan to ask Santa for.  It would also be great if the park would hurry up and open already!  They say it will be this month.  But they also said that in September.

Little Guy sleeps on the left and Buddy Boy, on the right.  In a year or so, when Baby Girl is ready to break out of the mini crib, we'll give her the toddler bed and get bunk beds for the boys.  They're already fighting over who gets to sleep up top.

That wall of windows called for custom covering, and I found a great seamstress on Etsy who made the curtains, as well as the curtains in my room and Baby Girl's room.  They are really the only new things in the room--the rest was relocated from the apartment.

In the corner, we have the dresser that does not actually house any of their current clothing.  The top few drawers are dedicated to crafting, correspondence, and gift wrapping supplies.  The bottom two hold their clothes to grow into...some hand-me-downs {lots for Buddy Boy, of course} and some things that seemed big-ish in the last season, so will potentially still fit the following year.  Having a designated space to put away the things we cannot yet use, but look forward to using soon, is a major help to me in terms of organization.  

You also see a box of Legos and a box of trains and track.  Those are the only toys in the boys' room.  They usually only play in their room during our afternoon rest time--translation: rest for me/ 1:15 block of confinement for them--and they either choose to play with one of those sets of toys, or we will bring in one set of toys from the buffet or bookcase in the hallway outside their room.  The fewer toys we have out at any one time, the happier they are.  They can't come out of rest time until they've cleaned their toys up, so they've finally learned not to scatter the pieces everywhere.  

I've also found that they don't really play with toys that much anymore.  They prefer to play sports and ride scooters or do arts and crafts.  Or "ice skate" around the kitchen on plastic plates or see how many coins they can fit inside a latex glove or pull each other around on fleece blankets.  You know, normal stuff.  So, we have drastically pared down our toy collection, with absolutely no complaints.

The clothes they are currently wearing are kept in the closet.  Church and party clothes up top, school and play clothes in the plastic drawers.  These plastic drawers went with me to my freshman year of college.  Isn't that crazy?  They've seen a lot of homes!  They are perfect for this use, though, because the boys can easily see through them, which helps in finding things, and I'm not worried about them pulling a drawer out on their toes, when I have them put away their laundry.  Underwear and socks in baskets on top, then shirts, pants, and pajamas in the drawers.  

We also have a tall stack of plastic bins full of outgrown clothes, there on the left.  There are more of the same in Baby Girl's room.  This is perhaps our biggest storage challenge.  I've passed on to friends, I've given away to Goodwill, I've consigned, but still, there is so much left.  We hope to have more children, so I don't want to part with the good stuff.  And the really good stuff I'll be holding onto 'til I have grandbabies.  So, plastic bins it is!

I love these little white tables from Ikea--we have four of them in the house!  They are actually side tables, but they are the perfect height for children and they are something like $11.  The boys like having a work spot for building car models and the like.

In the children's rooms, I like to keep the crucifixes at their eye-level.  They all like to give Jesus a kiss from time to time, and sometimes they take the crucifixes down to play church.

From their doorway, you see down the hall to the laundry room on the right.  Baby Girl's bedroom is next door and our bedroom is at the end of the hall.

And that, my friends, is probably more than you ever wanted to know about this one room!  

Where should we go next?  :)