Playroom Progress

I've always intended for our playroom to be the place in the house where the boys can truly play: more noisy, more messy, more fun! But since we officially made the room a playroom, it has been much more a place of chaos than a place of play. I don't know if it's just my boys, but they have a tendency to take out stuff just for the sake of taking out stuff. And before we know it, there is so much freaking stuff that you can barely walk in there!
But finally a lightbulb went off! If the boys can't get to the stuff, they can't make a mess of the stuff! So we headed to the Home Depot one Saturday and picked up three 8 foot long shelves and some brackets, and Josh did a little open shelving installation. While he was doing that, I organized the stuff and made a plan as to what we wanted beyond the reach of the boys' grubby paws: board games (so the tiny pieces no longer end up everywhere), puzzles, play doh, etc. Once the shelves were up, I strategically placed all the stuff using some baskets from Hobby Lobby and the result is a bit more organized chaos.

As for the artwork surrounding the shelves, I, of course, had to fill in the blank space. I've always wanted to try my hand at melted crayon art, and figured what better place than a playroom?!? So those are the ones on top. And or the C and L, I just used a pencil eraser to stamp them in the colors of the playroom.
We actually completed the project almost a year ago, and it really has helped keep the room more manageable. For the most part, it keeps the boys from playing with too many things at one time, although there still are plenty of other toys that they can reach on their own.

But that wasn't the only part of our playroom to get an overhaul. With Colton starting Kindergarten this September, we knew he would need a space to get his homework done. His room really doesn't have a place for a desk, so the playroom was the next logical place. And we knew that if Colton was getting a desk in the playroom, Levi would want one as well (that's just how things go in this house!). So this is what we came up with.

The picture is not the best, but it's another shelf from Home Depot hung on the walls with brackets. In the center is a two-level cubby from Target. We use it to hold paper, pencils, scissors, and other things you would probably store in a desk drawer! Oh, and their chairs are from Target. 

Because we moved that desk into the playroom, we also got rid of the desk that was previously in the playroom's closet since we never used it. By freeing up that space, I had room to move my craft stuff in there (which worked well because we had other plans for where my craft stuff used to be...ooooh cliffhanger!). I could have/should have left the boxes covered like they were, but my OCD tendencies wouldn't allow that so I had to recover the boxes in a fabric that coordinated with the playroom. It looks really crazy in the picture, but in person, the boxes are actually fairly organized!

And with all the reshuffling of the pieces of this room, I was left with an awkward space above the boys' kitchen that needed some decorating. Surprisingly (or maybe not?), we don't have a lot of personal photos on display in our house. But I wanted a place to display and look back on some of our travels, and since maps seem to be playroom-appropriate, this is where it landed.

The map has pictures of us in the various states we have visited. It's not very filled in yet, but hopefully will be one day! Oh and for the record, we've been to Texas (and Virginia obviously), but I have yet to put in pictures for them.

Because some of our favorite travels have actually been international (well, in the Caribbean), I wanted a way to include those pics...and some others that were favorites but too big to fit in a state! Hence, the frame arrangement around the map. 

So there's an updated look at our playroom. I think we could live here 100 years and I would never be fully satisfied with the space, but it fulfills its purpose and I guess that's really all I can ask!