I’ve had a busy and productive day, and now even though it isn’t even 10 pm, I’m feeling pretty tired!  Most of the substantial work was done after dinner – we’re rearranging one of the bedrooms to use it for ds16.

Right now we have four boys in one room, three girls and a toddler in the other, and the baby in our room.  That works thanks to the wonders of bunk beds, and they only keep their clothes in their room.  So the space is adequate for them; it probably sounds squishier than it is!

Ds16 has never complained about sharing a room with younger siblings, though sometimes it can be frustrating for him that things don’t stay neat after he cleans up.  That’s a reality any mom can sympathize with!  When he mentioned that he’d like his own bed (instead of a bunk bed), I told him I’d happily shift things around in the last bedroom to give him his own space, if he didn’t mind boxes of pillows lining one wall.  He didn’t. (This was much more than he was expecting, since he wasn’t really making a request, just sharing his feeling about sleeping on a bunk bed.)   I also told him to be prepared to share with either ds2 or the baby, when he gets moved out of our room.  He was fine with that.

Right now our smallest bedroom on the main floor has been used to store the nursing pillow inventory.  In addition the girls use the closet to supplement the space available in the freestanding closet in their room. Today we turned this small  bedroom into ds16’s room.  By rearranging the space, we were able to put all the cases of pillows on one side of the room, and the other side now has a bed, bookshelf, and two dressers.

The girls went through the closet to clear out room for him.  They filled five large garbage bags with clothes to give away.  So the closet is nice and roomy now!  Dd9 kept grimacing when contemplating giving a dress away, and I kept telling her that having fewer dresses will help her enjoy what she has more, since she doesn’t wear a lot of what she has because there are so many things pressed into the hanging space.  I was ruthless – just about every time she held something up, I just thumbed in the direction of the give away bag.

She also found the suit I bought for ds3 for Rosh Hashana- I had purchased it in advance, then a week before Rosh Hashana hung it on the low hanging rack in the closet so it would be ready when we needed it.  (I don’t like to rush around the day before trying to find everything that everyone needs.)  Then Rosh Hashana arrived and the suit was nowhere to be found.  It was a little annoying but what can you do?  That’s life.  It turns out it was somehow moved to dd9’s clothing rack and sandwiched between the many dresses she hasn’t been wearing.  Mystery solved.  🙂

We have more to do in the room, but the bulk of it is finished.  Just a week ago we spoke about doing this and I told ds I’d look for a bed to buy for him.  But we got a twin bed for the room for free – someone we know was cleaning out her basement and had an extra bed that she wanted to give away. Timely, wasn’t it?

Tomorrow is my big shopping day, and it generally takes a good part of the day after I go shopping to unpack and reorganize everything.  I’m glad that I got all of this work on the room taken care of, since otherwise it would have to wait until next week.

Avivah