Big girl room

I spent eight hours this weekend cleaning and decluttering Lauren’s room.

Eight. Hours.

For the past year, I’ve let her clean her own room. As long as the dirty clothes get put in the hamper, the clean clothes get put away and any food/plates/glasses make it to the kitchen, I’ve been OK with letting her do what she wants. Then, the other day she complained she had nothing to wear, and I noticed she had worn the same pants three days in a row.

“Where are the five pairs of jeans I’ve bought you?”

“I dunno …”

So I went into her dresser and lo and behold, instead of jeans, I found a drawer full of Halloween candy wrappers, bits and pieces of toys, drafts of art projects, and single socks. Apparently, she’s been cleaning her room by stuffing everything that’s on her floor into every possible nook and cranny. I’d previously nipped in the bud her attempt to clean by shoving everything under the bed, or in the closet (as I did when I was her age).

On Sunday morning, I felt particularly energetic. She’s with her dad this week, which is good, because I knew I would be getting rid of a bunch of her stuff. If she were there, she’d protest every item. She’d protested this summer when I attempted to purge stuff. At the end of six hours of sorting, I had three lawn bags of donations and two of trash. I made some decisions for her, giving away almost all of her early-reader books and a few of her McDonald’s-style stuffed animals. I even gave away the toy guitar I restrung with real strings a few years ago (but don’t hold tune), which I’ve rarely seen her play but has lived in the corner of her bedroom for years. That was a tough call, and she may not appreciate that I let it go. I also culled almost all of her half-filled coloring books, all the broken crayons, all of the markers (dried out). I called her at her dad’s about one group of items: her babydolls.

“Do you want to keep them or give them away?”

“Only give them to Natalie,” she said. Natalie is her 3-year-old cousin, to whom we gave half of her babydoll stuff this summer. My sister’s house is small, and they don’t have room for more toys especially with a second baby on the way, I told Lauren.

“I’ll have to think about it for when I come back to your house,” she said after a long hesitation. I know why she’s torn: the babydolls are her last link to being a little girl. I’m torn too. The two dolls she’s had left were gifts at her first birthday party. She learned to walk by pushing her purple babydoll stroller. And her teddy bear, Clover, slept in the plastic crib when Lauren took naps. I don’t really want to see them go either, and with the rest of the purging, there’s room enough in one of her closets.

After a trip to the Goodwill, I tackled the actual cleaning part, vacuuming the whole room twice, rearranging her furniture, removing her dresser. Instead, her clothes now hang in a closet, and a rolling cart with plastic bins holds her socks, underwear and PJs. She can see her whole wardrobe, which is bigger than I realized, and hopefully will not come to me again with the complaint of having nothing to wear.

Her room sits above the garage and it’s always cold in the winter and hot in the summer. I bought her new thermal-lined curtains for her picture window and an induction heat standing heater. I also finally (after about 9 months–lousy mother!) hung up two posters and three framed prints we bought, as well as some cork squares to display her artwork and photos. We have a recliner in the basement that we’ll move to her room to fill a corner and give her a reading chair.

I also did away with most of the places she had to stuff things, and with less things to put away, hopefully it will be easier for her to keep it picked up.

Last year, we did away with her bubblegum pink walls and went with a white, seafoam, green and brown color scheme. When I closed the door last night, I realized her bedroom now belongs to the big girl she is becoming. It’s a bittersweet moment.