make room, sister

I totally neglected my blog for the past two days. I had a lot of organizing to do and between that and doing the daily routine with the girls, I didn't have much time left over. On Sunday, we took on the task of moving Emme back into Luciana's room. She had moved in there for almost two months when we had relatives staying with us temporarily, and it really worked out well. Although we were able to leave quite a few things in Emme's old room the first time, this time we are completely moving her into Luciana's room. This means, two beds, two dressers, lots of toys and tons of books. We decided to do this for two reasons. First, Erik's mom is moving back from Florida and will be staying with us for awhile. Also, Roslyn is just about ready to transition from co-sleeping with us to her own bed (update to follow in the near future on that!). So, eventually, our plan was to move Emme and Luci into a room together and give Roslyn her own, at least until she was sleep trained. Emme transitioned so easily from one step to the next, as she often does so amazingly, so we wanted to get Roslyn on the same track.

Luckily, Erik is so helpful and we make a great team when it comes to doing the kids rooms. We are like the East side version of the Novogratz family. We worked all day Sunday and were so excited for the finished product. Luciana and Emme were both extremely excited too, and are doing really well together. However, Emme tends to wake up earlier than Luci so we are trying to get her to stop waking her sister up too early in the morning. The last thing we need is more than one grumpy, tired female in the house. All in all, everything is falling into place. All we need is a grandma to fill our empty room.

I don't have any before pictures of Luciana's room the day we started, but I have a picture of what her room looked like when we first moved in. Since the first picture, we added a big dresser, curtains, and a few other details but for the most part, this is the way her room was for a long time.

 Her bed and reading area

 Her desk

Small storage solutions

Seeing as to how this was over a year ago, she has taken on so many new possessions. Random toys, a zillion books, a thousand stuffed animals, and other stuff. Now, we had to streamline her things, as well as combine everything with Emme's. This is how the new room turned out:

 The view from the door.

 The new reading area. Roslyn spends most of her time there.

 See, she loves it.

 We moved the desk to maximize space and minimize Roslyn's climbing temptation. Emme's dresser is on this side of the room.

Luciana's dresser, a few books to minimize mess, the rest are in a drawer. We bought one of those toy slings to keep their stuffed animals out of the way. 

 Luciana sleeps on top bunk and we moved Emme's toddler bed down to bottom so she stays safe.

Emme wishes this was her bed. She doesn't realize she'd fall off on night one. 

Streamlined compartment storage for loose toys. Most of these are for Roslyn. The rest are put away so I'm not picking up 30 toys a day. 

Besides the closet, this is it. In the closet we have a hanging storage organizer for shoes. There are three built in drawers which hold art paper, writing paper, coloring books (no colors though), and more books. We like to store messy toys like blocks, puzzles and games up in the closet. We take those out for them when they want to play with them and put them away right after they're done to keep things clean and organized. 

I realize to some people this is meaningless, but for me, this sort of organization makes my life 10 times easier and more manageable. I can't imagine not having things neat and easy with all these rugrats plotting to take me down mentally. Mama's sanity is here to stay girls!

If anyone has any cool tips or advice on better organization for siblings sharing a room, please share. With birthdays and Christmas coming up, I know I am going to have to keep up with new ways to organize their room.

Oh, and I apologize for the poor quality pictures. Please direct all complaints to Erik, so that he can buy me the nice camera I so obviously deserve. Thank you.