{Small Spaces} DinoEgg's room reorganization

One thing that all kids seem to generate: clutter. There's the paper clutter and the books that end up everywhere. And the toys, from puzzles to itty bitty parts... and of course, those Lego bricks! I've stepped on my boy's Duplo blocks countless of times, which is why I'm rather inspired by Jennifer's great room reorganization, since she manages to tame her son's Lego collection. All this packing was done in a day, which makes it all the more amazing!

Jennifer, or DinoMama as she is also known, is a spirited extrovert full-time working mum with a slow-to-adapt semi-extrovert hardworking, loving husband and a highly spirited extrovert independent 6 year old boy.  Life around them is never quiet, much to DinoPapa's dismay, but they are a fun loving family who love to hang out together with family and friends.  Jennifer blogs about all this excitement in her blog "We are the DinoFamily", so do drop by to read about them!

~~~~~~~

It is always a challenge for me to keep DinoEgg's room neat and tidy, plus he is not helping AT ALL.  If I ask him to keep his things in his room, he will simply just plonk it on top of the boxes or chuck it into one of the shelves.

I decided that since we have already settled into our new house and we're having friends over for the next couple of months for the Christmas & New Year get together, it's time to do something about the messy room.  On top of that, he will be going to primary school next year, and we really have to organise his room to accommodate for the new milestones. 

So this morning I dived in and get my act together starting with his cupboards, only to stop 2 hours later as it's time to get ready to go to DinoEgg's art class.  I resumed in the evening, got stuck at one point as I couldn't decide whether to sort his storybooks by author, category, height or something. The book shelves an hour later... I have restrictions thanks to the "genius" who designed the HDB flat layout, the structure beam is in the house, thus creating a small area in the room which are too small to do anything except building a wall cupboard.  The depth is not deep thus unable to fit those broader books nicely, I have to put them facing out and use bookends to prevent them from avalanching down.  Feeling drained, I decided to ditch this for a while and attacked the other area.

DinoEgg (and me too!) is a Lego fan and it's always a headache when it comes to keeping those sets that he painstakingly built. I do not want to dismantle them and have him build them again later when he wants to play with them.  I have a Toyogo box for the Lego vehicles, helicopters, aeroplanes, boats, and tankers, but the collection keeps growing and that box is not big enough.  I managed to find a bigger Toyogo box (I'm a Toyogo box fan BTW) and the migration takes place!

I even decided to put the figurines into the 2 small boxes I bought from Spotlight, they were meant for art and craft knick knacks such as beads, gems, clips etc but who says you can't use it to keep Lego figurines and small special parts?

One thing I did not expect while go through DinoEgg's stationery, is the amount of pencils, pens, erasers, rules, sharpeners & small note pads that he has!  I counted at least 40 pencils, 4 pens, 10 erasers, 15 rulers, 5 sharpeners (that is because I threw many of them away, as DinoEgg has been sharpening his color pencils & pencils obsessively) and 12 note pads.  These are collected from his 6 years of celebrating his classmates' birthdays in the childcare.  These go into separate pencil cases, 1 for pencils, 1 for rulers and sharpeners, and the erasers goes into a small plastic travel pouch and the  small note pads go into a box.  The pens are taken away, to be used in my office.

After I sorted out the stationery, I continue with the rest slowly and steadily.  I decided to sort the books into 6 categories, Chinese books, knowledge & information books, Eric Carle, Usbornes, Dr Seuss and books by other authors.

And I am done!  Look at this NEAT and TIDY room!

I showed it to DinoEgg (Ya, he is still up at this hour as he refused to sleep until I do) and he was very happy.  In his words, "Wow! Thanks Mum!  There's more space now and I like it alot!".  That was music to my ears, at least my hard and back-breaking work was appreciated.  However, what he says after that warmed up my heart. He gave me a hug and said, "Mum, that was hard work, I think you need to eat something now."  He remembered that I did not have my dinner earlier. So now, proud as I can be with myself, I'm glad that I finally managed to get his room in shape.  Thanks to Jus, who initiated the "Small Spaces" series that gave me the huge push I needed to get my butt going, otherwise I'll be procrastinating till next year!

~~~~~~~

Well, I'm so glad that Jennifer managed to reorganize DinoEgg's room. She did a great job, don't you think? I hope it's inspired those of you who have been meaning to sort out your child's clutter. If you would like your child's room to be featured, or have a room makeover to share, do drop us a note at john(dot)jus(at)gmail(dot)com, and we'll share here! Stay tuned tomorrow for a peek into a lovely little girl's room!