I read a lot of blogs written by and for parents, and I am continually in awe of the photos I see of the interior of other parent’s homes – particularly the photos of their children’s spaces. Invariably they are stylish and well-organized – at least seemingly so, god knows what’s shoved in those closets – and I can’t help but wonder exactly what muscle relaxants or horse tranquilizers they must be giving their children, and in what mammoth dosage, and how I too might get my hands on some of those. Because to my dismay, my kid’s room doesn’t look like anything close to the crisp, streamlined, sparkling utopias of those parent’s kid’s rooms. My kid’s room looks like something pink and fluffy that was filled with Littlest Pet Shop characters and pointless plastic dime-store baubles exploded inside an IKEA. And its looked like that for years. HOUSEWIFERY: I R DOIN’ IT RONG.
This morning I walked into her room and finally decided that something needed to be done, and fast. But I know myself well enough to know that approaching such a project in an all-or-nothing fashion is just going to be setting myself up for failure. I needed, upfront, to embrace the fact that my daughter’s room is never going to look like a freaking Pottery Barn or West Elm catalog layout. We are simply not those people. No, we are the people who shop those stores only during their 75% off EVERYTHING MUST GO super sales and grab the dent-and-scratch leftovers. And I’m okay with that. And I’m also okay with a bit of disarray and disorganization in my kid’s space – she’s nine years old for crissakes.
But I am SO NOT OKAY WITH THIS:
At least the leaning tower of clothes on her chair is composed of CLEAN clothes.
That's a toybox. Under there. Somewhere.
Oh look! An Obama foam finger! That'll come in, err, handy?
I realized pretty quickly this wasn’t going to be an Extreme Kid Room Makeover worthy of HGTV or anything, but also that a 360-degree transformation wasn’t really needed or necessary. I just needed to stop the insanity, put some things away, throw some things out, and CONTAIN. It didn’t need to be perfect. It didn’t need to be magazine Before and After-worthy. Better would do.
And so, VOILA – The Bettering:
HOLY CHRIST I CAN SEE THE CHAIR AGAIN!
TOYBOX TRIUMPHANT! (Ignore the messy bed piled with 6,000 stuffed animals. IGNORE IT, I SAY!)
Don't worry - Obama finger is still around, safely ensconced inside the toybox now.
BAM! IN YOUR FACE INSANE MESS OF A KID’S ROOM, YOU DO NOT SUCK NEARLY AS BADLY NOW.
Okay, so it’s not some kind of epic and dazzling transformation. But it still made a huge difference, and I now feel like I can walk into the kid’s room and not immediately begin hyperventilating.
So in conclusion: it’s okay to just do what you can do. Not all of us were born to be Good Housekeeping photo spread material. Some of us were instead born to just be awesome and keep shit real, amirite? *fistbump*
