If you’re new around here, welcome! I’m Kylee and I work as a property manager + interior styler specializing in vacation rental properties. I’m most often working on other people’s homes, but during this Spring 2020 One Room Challenge I’ll be making over a room in my own home in San Diego, CA! Follow along as I transform my three-year-old son’s bedroom over the next few weeks and stay tuned for the final reveal on June 25th!
It’s week 2 of the ORC and the word of the week was O R G A N I Z E. Here’s a reminder of how the room looked pretty much on the daily after hurricane Nash would hit:
To make the project a bit more manageable, I split it up into three parts:
Part 1 // Clothes + Shoes
Before, we had clothes and shoes stored in the upper-middle part of the closet; out of his reach. But he’s been more interested in picking out his own clothes lately so I moved everything to the bottom portion of the closet so he can reach everything and get dressed “all me myself”.
Part 2 // Self-Play Toys
Before, all of the toys were stored in three pull-out bin/drawers at the bottom of the closet. I tried to organize inside of the drawers with smaller bins, but every time (literally, within 10 minutes, EVERY time) I would get things looking nice, hurricane Nash would come through and dump all of the contents out onto the bedroom floor. How was he supposed to know that the cars went in the bottom drawer and the dinosaurs and doctor kit and dominos and play-doh all went into the second drawer, but each in their own unmarked bin? That part was lost in toddler translation. It didn’t take long until I was just as guilty of throwing things back into the giant bin. Organization was a lost cause.
I had the idea to try and utilize the space between the stackable beds for toy storage. But first let me back-track a bit here and tell you about the beds. These are the UTÅKER Stackable Beds from Ikea. We picked these out vs a single bed because we don’t have a guest room in our house (460 sf, remember?) and this would allow us to accommodate the occasional overnight guests. Things would be cozy, hence why I said occasional, but still functional and comfortable.
Unfortunately, we made the rookie mistake of just ordering our favorite mattress from Amazon and not paying attention to the VERY specific recommended mattress thickness. The ones we ordered were too thick (8”) and the beds can’t stack properly. So we store the mattress and bring it in when we unstack the beds. Not ideal and maybe we should just get a new mattress but I do appreciate the extra storage it gives us! TIP: if you do buy the UTÅKER beds, get the 6″ mattress.
Ok, back to the organization plan! I ordered 6 of these felt baskets from Target and sorted all of his toys into each of them by category: Dinosaurs, Animals, Games, Pretend Play, Magna-Tiles and Construction. Then I printed out a picture that represents the contents of each bin, laminated them and attached them to the basket with binder rings. My hope is that if he knows where everything should go he will put the toys back in the right place. The key word here being HOPE, of course. I’ll do a check in at the end of the ORC with how the new system is working. But aren’t they pretty?
Part 3 // Supervised-Play Toys + Art Supplies
The last part of the closet organization was supplies and activities that either need supervision (like scissors and glitter glue) or have the potential to be a HUGE mess if all taken out at once (like all of our puzzles). I designated one drawer for puzzles, one for art supplies and one for home-learning. Each got a laminated label, which I attached to the drawers using a hole punch and string.
I also purchased these document pouches to help keep puzzles and games organized.
So, What’s Next?
Now that we have a handle on toy storage and organization, I’m ready to get my hands dirty and start on the feature wall! I’ll be using 1.75″ wood planks to create a design on the wall in the left corner of the room. You may remember my cringey drawing from Instagram stories a while back:
I’ll be staggering the boards horizontally between the two existing panels on the wall at the head of the bed. Then vertically along the wall at the side of the bed. It will be much cleaner than my drawing above; more like the mood board below!
One tricky part about this ORC is that I can’t just wait for Nash to go to bed and work on the project at night. Because he’s in there asleep.. Think I can get the accent wall done by next Thursday, with my husband back at work and a three year old attached to my side? Oh, and did I mention I’ve never used a circular saw? This should be interesting… Follow along on Instagram @kyleeandsteven this week for progress!
