Emptying the Office

The first step to creating Oliver’s big boy room was to empty out the office. This actually took us weeks, it was a HUGE job - we stored so much stuff in here. We had to go through every shelf, every basket, every box and rolling cart and container. Everything was packed into boxes and tubs and even bags. Some designated for the attic, some designated for the basement or other spots.

The ugly truth: it looked like a disaster in here for a long time. It's actually organized chaos, but it felt as claustrophobic in real life as it does in the pictures.

It was extra crowded because it contained both packed up office stuff and a lot of stuff for Oliver's new room including his future dresser, nightstand, some toys and kitchen set. And then some random piles of stuff as well that landed in here from regular life. It was a lot of work to clear it out, but well worth it.

Since I'm not lifting a lot of heavy things these days, especially up and down the stairs. Mike was the superhero who got all the hard work done. Oliver was a great helper who helped move smaller stuff to the top of the stairs in the hall.

It's SO much better, but still crowded for redoing a room - all that's missing is the bed! It's not going to be easy to work this way, but for the first time we don't have the luxury of emptying a room to work on it. The basement is full of office stuff and we don't want to spread the chaos into other rooms of the house. Oliver is a sensitive kid and moving him to a new room will be hard enough, so we want to keep the rest of the house and his life as normal as possible. While Oliver does want to move to the bigger room (we gave him a choice) and he is excited about it, I know he's also anxious over such a big change so we want to make the transition as smooth as possible. Our goal is to keep him involved so that he feels empowered - helping with the work, making decisions (choosing from option tasteful option A and option B) and helping to make things for his new room.