The Bedroom Switch-a-Roo

Seth and I have the bigger bedroom in our house, so we had planned to switch bedrooms with the kids at some point this summer, since I had figured out that I could fit two bunk beds in there, but then it kind of happened at the last minute when the big kids ended up being gone for most of the week.  They went to VBS with Seth's mom, who picked them up and dropped them off most days, and kept them overnight a couple of times.  So I decided to take advantage of the opportunity, and do the switch.  First I painted our bedroom, one of the few rooms that hadn't been painted when we moved in.  After a lot of deliberation, I painted it all white; walls, trim, and ceiling.  The paneling was a bit of a pain to paint, but it turned out awesome!  It looked so fresh and clean, and kind of beach cabin-like.  I loved it so much I started having second thoughts about giving it to the kids!  =)  But I made the sacrifice, and on Seth's weekend we moved all the furniture around.  The house was a mess, and it took several days to get it all done.  It felt (and looked!) like moving, which it pretty much was, without the boxes.  We took a last-minute late evening trip to Ikea to get a new bunk bed after we realized we couldn't use the second set that we had (it had been water-damaged, which was a bummer, but I love the Ikea set!).  We tried several different arrangements before we found the one that we liked best, and we ended up moving some of the furniture around in the rest of the house, too.  I had planned to keep Simon in our room longer, but he needed to move into his bigger bed, which didn't end up fitting in our room, so he was moved to the kids' room.

We moved our toy bookshelf from the living room into the kids' new closet, to better organize their toy storage.  Now the only things that are out all the time for them are a few toys for Simon, books, and LEGOs.  That is really all they use on a daily basis, anyway, and other toys are brought out only if they are asked for.  This is huge for us in keeping the mess to a minimum!

I was pleasantly surprised with how everything fit in our new bedroom; I was a little worried that the bed would just barely fit, but there was more room than I had thought there would be.  Our room is now a bit of a "family closet", with everyone's clothes in there.  Seth and I have our clothes in the closet, and the kids have theirs in the dresser.  So far that's working really well for us.  Seth and I are really loving having all of our clothes in one spot rather than spread out between the closet and dresser!

I also painted our dresser/nightstand set.  They were a light green, which matched our room, but they were quite chipped, and I had originally planned for the dresser to be in the kids room, and it wouldn't have matched the colors in there.  I used leftover bathroom paint, so they are now light grey, and I couldn't be happier with how they turned out!  Even though the dresser ended up in our room anyway, it is fresh and looks really good in there, too!

We put our second dresser in the office, and it holds miscellaneous things, like games, gift wrapping supplies, and fabric.  The tall bookshelf that was in there was moved into our room to keep the office from being too full, and it's working perfectly for storage in our room!

Since we had to move so much stuff around, we did quite a bit of purging as well, and I'm really happy with the results.  The whole house feels cleaner and less cluttered, and the closets are much less crowded, which makes me happy!

This turned out to be a HUGE project, especially with all the painting, unexpected trip to Ikea and decluttering, but I am so happy with how everything turned out!  The whole house feels fresh and clean and new, and I think the new arrangements are going to work really well for us right now.  =)