It all started innocently enough...This room used to be our "guest bedroom". It actually had a double bed in it, and you could see the floor. Unfortunately, I can count on one finger the number of guests who actually slept in this room, so eventually we moved the bed to our room at my parents' beach house. The room then began to evolve into a kind of large walk-in closet where we put stuff that we couldn't find a better place for, and I'd just shut the door, allowing myself to live in my own little Neat and Tidy world.
Let's take a look at what we've managed to collect in here: On the left side of the picture you will see a very beautiful oak "family" baby cradle that my dad made for my uncle when his first son was born over 25 years ago. Five babies have slept in this cradle, including my own, and it waits patiently to be used again. You will also see a mess of gift wrap and some sort of suit luggage bag that my husband doesn't use anymore. Moving to the right, we have the Mountain of Outgrown Baby Gear That Must Be Kept for Baby #2 (exersaucer, bouncy seat, Boppy, baby bathtub, doorway jumpy seat, automatic swing, etc.) I don't even want to think about the amount of money that we invested in this stuff 2 years ago, and of course, it is all manufactured out of incredibly Safe and Cleanable Plastic, which is manufacturing-ese for "takes up a crapload of space and can't be folded or taken apart for storage". Up against the wall is a bookcase full of travel books to places we can only dream about returning to for 16-18 years, and hundreds of dollars worth of (now) outdated medical texts, each one purchased 10 years ago with the hope that it held the Secret Key to Understanding and Remembering Enormous Gobs of Information. And moving on to the right we have my husband's electric guitar and amp from when he played in a "band" in high school, scrapbook supplies, some serving dishes I bought for my daughter's first birthday (and haven't used since), and a big 'ole box of diapers from Costco.
Three weeks ago we decided that we needed to get our act together and start preparing for Baby #2. We ordered our daughter's "big girl" bedroom furniture and proceeded to clean up our secretly messy spare room. Four garage shelving units, two trips to Goodwill, and two coats of paint later, we have a former closet that that actually looks like a bedroom again:
Our daughter has successfully slept in here for a week now, and her old room anxiously awaits it's new occupant.
And I am tired.
