There has been a lot of physical changes in our home since my 12 yr old niece came to live with us. Our spare room no longer exists, so we have had to have new units downstairs to house bits and pieces that belonged to myself and my husband which were in there (not quite completed this stage as there are still two boxes of books on our bedroom floor). This room has now been decorated and new furnishings put into (except for bed).
My sons old room is now my nieces room. It has been cleared except for my sons old bed, the clothes rail in the built in wardrobe has been placed higher. The first coat of colour has gone on - it's very red! Her white high bed has been purchased with a desk and storage under it, hopefully it should arrive in the next two weeks. Once that is in we can properly assess how much more storage is required, we do have a nice set of black shelves from the old 'spare' room which we can get some rather funky glass doors to go on, but don't know whether that much will be required yet - a lot of her stuff is still at my parents place.
The demise of the 'spare' room also means that I have had to halve my wardrobe so that I can share it with my husband - he used the 'spare' one before that.
Today we are trying out a new 'system' for the laundry. It seems my darling little niece has quite an issue about putting stuff away properly (I know she's almost a teenager and that is what they do!) - especially dirty clothes. As small and petty as it might seem it has really got me in a stew. I am a stickler for only washing once or at the most twice a week. I have found that this means stuff doesn't get put in the wash unless it really needs to go in it. It also means that when putting lovely fresh clean clothes on the washing line I can see exactly what has been worn (or not!). This is how I have discovered the disappearing act that most of my nieces clothes seem to do. So the system that I have used for the last 13 + years of my married and family life is going (at least for a trial period). The washing baskets we used, one for whites, one for light colours, one for dark colours, were always kept in my wardrobe. Maybe the trip to our room was just too far?????? So my husband has come up with the idea of using a chest that used to live in the 'spare' room but which up until today has had no home. This is going to be kept on the landing (between all the rooms).
I have no idea if any of these changes is going to work well, they have taken an awful lot of energy and thought. It has reconfirmed to me the importance of not getting too attached to 'stuff' or 'systems', but as with all change it really is not easy.
there's a laundry basket in every bedroom here - ours is a triple, the boys share and the girls have their own. Mostly I wash one persons stuff in one load, then it gets dried and put back in their room - minimal sorting.
ReplyDeletetowels sheets etc get done on their own, anything specially one colour or the other goes in with ours stuff which is done dark & light.
I do G's basket when it's full ( the routine is *supposed* to be everyone's gets done once a week!) because mostly like A, her clothes carpet the floor &the chair - but at the end of the day it's their loss... they've got to learn! I've done some washing machine lessons - I think we need some more :-)
If this new system we have set up doesn't work, maybe we will try yours next - thank you x.
ReplyDeleteVery envious of your washing once or twice a week....I do several loads every 2 (sometimes 3) days. But then mine are mess monsters. Hope the new system works!
ReplyDelete2 loads a day. That's all I'm going to say. But the benefit of having a ridiculously small house is that there's only 1 dirty clothes hamper. This will all work out. I'll pray for you that the details to be worked out are not a distraction and you can still enjoy your new addition, and communicate love to her!
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