Bedroom, Loft and Laundry

Our bedroom. Haven't done anything with it yet. We are still thinking about what we want.

Not much decorating in here either, but by Beth's special request, here is the laundry room--including our lovely turquoise washer and dryer. I am such an idiot about things like this. We'd been shopping for a washer and dryer before we moved, and of course all I cared about was that it was a cute color. I knew that was unreasonable and I should be looking at function, not appearance, but I just couldn't help it. (I would like to think I am too smart for that sort of thing. But no.) But all the colored ones were way more expensive, and I had very reluctantly resigned myself to getting perfectly good ones in white, when . . .

we saw these turquoise ones at Home Depot. Turquoise . . . just like our dining room wall!! (Obviously, it was meant to be.) And then, they went on sale, and we learned that we'd get $150 back in gas company rebates. Which made them only about $50 more than the boring white ones we'd decided to get. Guess how hard it was to make that purchase? :)

Blogging is so self-indulgent. I can talk at length about all the things I find so fascinating, but I usually keep to myself because I know others won't find them quite so fascinating. :) These are all the things I always want to tell people about our house, but my better nature makes me give the condensed version. I've justified it, because you can always stop reading if you are bored--right?

So, the loft. We opted for the loft instead of 3rd bedroom upstairs, because

a. I've always wanted a loft

b. we figured, if it was a bedroom, we'd have 2 rooms for kids to sleep in but no room for their toys. So the toys would be all jumbled in with their clothes and beds, creating a very non-serene sleeping environment. This way, we have 3 boys sleeping in a room, but then a room with lots of space for them to play in. (Currently, actually, Ky's cradle is in the loft, but when he grows out of that he'll be in the crib.)

However, since I hate toy clutter, and I knew I'd be spending lots of time reading in the loft as well, I wanted to figure out some way to easily organize and clean up the toys. We had this nice built-in bookshelf, so we found these turquoise bins at IKEA (we have these in the laundry room also) and mixed them with some other chocolate-brown ones we had to create nice-looking toy storage. The boxes are designated for: cars, animals, instruments, blocks, baby toys, and legos. (I got rid of a lot of stuff when we moved, so most everything will fit into those categories.) I keep the legos in the high box and the boys have to ask me to get those down (so the small pieces aren't always getting lost). Abe and Seb are great at cleaning up by themselves--they know where everything goes--and when I say, "Can you go get me a toy for Malachi?" they just go to the baby toys box and find one.

I also put the books in rainbow order--this has been a weird OCD-ish quirk of mine since junior high; I organize my clothes that way too--and it works fine, since I don't have so many books that I can't find what I'm looking for pretty easily. (I can usually call up a mental picture of the cover of the book I'm looking for anyway, so I know most of their colors.) With this big bookshelf, we have room for the boys' books too, which I put on lower shelves so they can reach. This has the added benefit that even a small kid can put the books away in the right place--we just say, "Go put that in the yellows" or whatever.