One of the hardest parts about organizing is maintenance. We all get lazy sometimes. Even with a place for everything, sometimes you just don't feel like putting things where they go.

This is one of the biggest reasons that I make a distinction between dirty and cluttered. A lot of us have clean albeit cluttered homes. My kids' rooms have the opposite problem.....they are fully organized, but they just won't stay clean.

After helping my friend organize and rearrange her daughter's room, I decided that one way get my kids to clean their room was to redecorate. We usually rearrange the rooms every January. We like to try new furniture placement, and reevaluate whether our systems are working or not, and sometimes even change the function of a room. But being out of school for summer, and getting ready to go back, we really needed good motivation to clean the rooms. And when you involve a little kid in the rearrangement of their room, they feel so empowered and creative (and will actually help).

The view from the doorway before. This is one of the reasons I decided it was time to redecorate. How would you like to walk by this everyday?

The view from the doorway after. The bow organizer got moved from the pink wall. This is one of those placement reevaluations. I thought the bow organizer would make a very cute design element on the wall. In reality, the kids kept knocking it off the wall. They never put the bows back on it so there was always a pile of bows on the floor in front of it. Solution: off the wall and on the floor.

The view of the side of the bed before. When I bought and refinished this side table, I made my daughter promise to keep it nice. It usually gets cleaned off, but this small walkway usually gets trashed. I figured it was because there was no reason to keep the bed made or beside the bed clean. I had never bought my kids a comforter when I moved them to a queen size bed (used to be a guest room bed), they were just using an old quilt.

Side of the bed after. Solution: I bought a new comforter and made a big deal about it. We went to several stores searching for the cutest (and cheapest) one. Then I made a small change of switching the way the bed faced. Now it takes up less room so there's more room to play on the floor. Also it looks like a giant day bed. With the pillows at the top, I can fold back the comforter instead of trying to shove it between the bed and wall. The girls thought this made their bed look really cool. I also put one of their buckets beside the bed for all their blankets, pillows, and stuffed animals that they like to keep on their bed.

(side note: my oldest girl picked out the saying on the wall. She had vinyl on her wall before but it was white and didn't really show up. This is sparkly black and I thought her saying was very cute and creative.)

Corner view before. One problem I noticed was that the girls' room was "visually cluttered". I use this terminology all the time when I'm organizing for others.....and all I'm really trying to explain is that when there is too much for the eye to look at all at once, it gives the area a feel of being cluttered even if it is not.

Corner view after. Even though I was the one to paint all the crazy murals before, I still had to talk the girls into letting me paint over them. We left some on the opposite wall, and moved a picture from the opposite wall to fill the blank space. My oldest daughter loves busy, bright, brash things....but even she agreed that this just looked better.

Hopefully, seeing that the plumber's toilet gets clogged too (so to speak) will help motivate you to tackle your own spaces. And if you want to involve your kids, or just give yourself extra incentive, remember that the cleaning and organizing is secondary to the fun of redecorating.

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Yesterday I got to help a friend "gut out" (her words) her daughter's room.

View from the doorway before

View from the doorway after

I think we all assume that at a certain age, our children are capable of cleaning their own room. We ask, bribe, threaten, what-have-you to get them to straighten their rooms and keep them in some semblance of clean. Then when we can take it no more, we decide to clean it ourselves. This friend called me because she was overwhelmed just stepping in the room. After we cleaned it you could actually feel that it was lighter.

We started in the closet, and just went through everything. The whole room only took 3 hours because this friend was not being sentimental and made decisions very quickly. It was great!! She had actually set aside different drawers for certain items, so once we had the closet cleared everything went a lot faster since it had a place to go to.

Closet before

Closet After

2 lessons I took from this room are:

1. Don't underestimate children when it comes to "stashing". Check every corner, under the bed, in the closet, behind the door, etc. These kids are creative, so get creative when you check their rooms.

Dresser Before

Under the Bed Before

(I actually had to pick the bed frame up to move it since the little girl had stuffed it to the gills)

2. When your child runs out of socks, don't buy her more. Make her clean her room instead. My friend and I must have found at least 20 pairs of socks in her child's room. She had just bought her all new socks because her daughter couldn't find any to wear.

Left side of the room Before

Left side of the room (and dresser) After

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