An Update in Jackson’s Room
Our son’s room needed some serious storage and organization help, so we made a few changes that have made a huge difference! Here are all the details.
Remember Jackson’s cute room that we made over last year?
It was such a fun project, and he still loves all of the colorful stripes and feeling like his room is truly his own. But, we were running into a little, um, organization problem.
As in: we had none.
When we first moved into this house and started planning his space, we declared there would be no toys at all in the kids’ bedrooms, since we have a play room upstairs, and figured we didn’t need to worry about any sort of toy storage.
But, as I’m sure you can guess, that has slowly fallen by the wayside. We still keep the vast majority of the kids’ toys in the game room, but Jackson’s LEGO collection lives in his room and he’s gotten a few toys lately that he wants to keep separate from the toys his brother can play with (because, let’s be honest, Grant loves to destroy things)
As a result, for the last couple of months every time I ask Jackson to get his room clean, it remains a total disaster. Like, toys everywhere. LEGOs on every surface.
Complete. Disaster.
As soon as I realized he actually didn’t have a place to put things and wasn’t just trying to get out of cleaning his room, I set to work trying to find some quick and easy solutions for his space so that he can keep the things he wants in there without it being a total disaster zone all the time.
When I’m tackling something like this, I always start by asking myself what the problems are in the space. Here were ours:
- LEGOs EVERYWHERE
- No place to store Shopkins and Littlest Pet Shop toys
- His desk and bookcase are just a dumping ground for chaos
I also asked Jackson what his problems with his room were – in addition to not having a place to display his LEGO sets and store his toys, he said he didn’t like that he had some of his clothing drawers in his closet and some out in the room. He really wanted a dresser so he could keep all of his non-hanging clothes in one place.
Once I knew what the issues were, I could start looking for solutions.
I knew right away we’d be swapping out his bed for something with storage. A storage bed is a really easy win when it comes to organization, and I loved the idea of him not having access to the space under his bed (because it’s just one more place to clean!).
We ended up going with the IKEA SLAKT bed – I showed him a bunch of different choices and this is the one he loved. It has four good-sized drawers and two small shelves underneath it, which makes for tons of great (and totally necessary) storage.
We decided to use the drawers as clothing storage – his room is small and a dresser was just going to take up more space.
With the new bed in place (and suddenly a lot more room in his closet, which we quickly turned to loose LEGO storage), I turned my attention to the toy storage.
The desk in his room is largely unnecessary – we were really grateful for it during the (oh so long) stage of virtual schooling, but he’s back in person now and the desk is just a dumping ground for toys. We decided to ditch it – of course, with the understanding that we’ll have to find a different solution if virtual school becomes a necessity again, but we’ll cross that bridge when and if we get there.
I re-arranged a few things so that I could dedicate the wall where his closet is to four long shelves for toys and LEGO display. He has more than enough room for all of the LEGO sets that he’s built, and it’s a great surface for him to play with them, display them, and just generally NOT have them everywhere else.
I’m honestly surprised at how much more storage this added to his room. I knew it would be impactful, but he has a ton of extra storage now. The top shelf is practically empty, and he has a ton of space left in his square bookcase now too. We’ll see how organized he keeps things over time – but for now I’m feeling really great!
We have three sets of plastic drawers in his closet now that will house all of his other LEGOs – and he, of course, wanted them sorted by color. We’ve made a small dent in it but I’ll be sorting LEGOs for the next month. At least.
Send help.
JACKSON’S ROOM SOURCES:
- Bed
- Shelves
- Nightstand
- Gray blanket
- Wall lamp
- Llama sheets
- Cube bookcase
- Square baskets
- Bulletin board (similar)
- Stuffed animal basket (similar)