... that's what I'd like to have. And after last weekend's efforts I believe we got a little closer. We finally bought, assembled and arranged a new wardrobe for our bedroom. Up to now, I had the smallest wardrobe thinkable. No way all of my clothes would fit in, and everything always came out totally wrinkled...
So now, we have a big(ger) closet in our bedroom, which not only contains all of my clothes but also K.'s. This freed up some space in a couple of built-in closets and allowed us to re-arrange all of our belongings. My small closet made it into little H.'s room, who until last weekend shared one with her big sister in big sister's room. She was thrilled to have a closet of her own and so was M., who no longer will have H.'s clothes, PJ's and underwear spread out on her floor! (We're still in a transitional phase, though, as this morning little H. picked out her clothes in her room and went straight to her sister's to get dressed!)
It was a lot of work. It took up all of our weekend. In order to sort out we had to go through everything. I have now three bags of children's clothes waiting for a new owner. We also about halved our entire shoe collection. We should repeat the same exercise with the girls' toys. The one problem with that, however, is that little H. can't part. Whenever I suggest we should get rid of something, she starts crying. "But it's my favorite, mommy! You can't throw that one out!" She still has a painting up in her room, made with her class mates in pre-school which takes up about an entire wall. I'm not allowed to take it down! We have to arrange things "around" it. And my guess is she'll keep it up there until she goes to college... We also have this ever growing collection of stuffed animals. Of every single one the girls can tell when they got it, who they got it from, why they got it. Like the little kitten in the picture, which we found at our house after a vacation. We never were able to find out who it belonged to, nor where it came from, and so the girls "adopted" it. I was so happy when M. told me last week she only wanted books under the Christmas tree... I wonder if we can talk little H. in doing the same, as really, we have no more room for even more toys or stuffed animals!
Now, in case you're running short on gift ideas for kids, check out the Every Child Needs series at the Giverslog...