Three Cheers for the Playroom!

So here's the thing. By no means would I consider myself a neat FREAK, because I'm definitely not. However, I do like a neat, organized home with things neatly displayed, decorated, etc. I admit to having a bit of OCD about weird things as it relates to my house. I am the same way, no, actually I think I was worse in my classroom. I would often find myself cleaning and straightening the classroom, (even vacuuming) around the kids, pushing in chairs that I KNEW were about to be sat in again in about 4 seconds. But I couldn't help myself. I just like the way things look when everything is in it's place.

So having triplets really threw a BIG GIANT WRENCH into that!

It's not so much that THEY make messes, it's more that they have a LOT of STUFF. If you thought your house was cluttered with ONE baby at a time, I invite you to mine to see what a once fairly-decent-sized living room looks like after being dwarfed by THREE exersaucers, THREE toddler rockers, and a CRAP load of toys. Suddenly the living room doesn't look so "pretty". My nice shades of brick red and mustard yellow decor suddenly don't look as pretty when there's a potpourri of primary colors challenging them.

Now, you know I love my kids more than life itself. I would do anything for them. However, their toys are driving me crazy. I've tolerated it for a year. I came to accept that my living room was really a playroom that happened to have a TV and a few couches in it. I tried to "rearrange" things to at least make the toys look more orderly. But frankly, it aint gonna happen!

So now the upside. When we bought and built our house some 5 years ago?? We had several options...4 bedroom home with a HUGE open loft upstairs? 4 bedroom house with no loft at all? 5 bedroom house with half a loft. Fortunately, even though we'd barely begun the process of trying to get pregnant, and never DREAMED we'd end up with triplets, we somehow had the foresight to build a 5 bedroom home with a half loft. So up until a year ago, we filled those rooms as follows:

1. Master Bedroom-upstairs
2. Junk room-upstairs
3. Guest bedroom-upstairs
4. Brian's "Manhut"-upstairs
5. Guest bedroom-downstairs


Then the babies were born and Junk Room became "Nursery."

I had intended on making the loft their play area, but frankly, the idea of them being upstairs alone while I spend most of my time downstairs didn't sit well with me.

And so, much to my dismay that's how the living room became the playroom. I had toyed with the idea of eliminating a guest room and making it a playroom, but I really like having places for company to stay, so I fought it as long as I could. But now, I must apologize to the masses of people who regularly come visit. I now only have one guest room. (I do have 2 couches though...) Because I couldn't take it any longer.

I wanted my living room back.

And that's how the downstairs guest room became the playroom.

It literally happened in a weekend. If there's one thing Brian knows about me, it's my need for things to be done AS SOON AS I IMAGINE THEM! He likens it to the fact that if I buy something from a store, I MUST open it as soon as I get in the car. I cannot wait till I get home.

So once the room became free of furniture, I had the crappy task of finding homes for the junk...

Be honest...did you even notice Hunter in this picture above??

and in basically one weekend, Brian painted it, and put up some chair rail for me. And then I began the decorating....It's not done yet. I'm waiting for a big rug & a kid sized table to be delivered and I have some wall art to put up yet, but for now, it will do just fine!

God love playrooms. Seriously. It's actually better than I imagined even. I can be in the kitchen working, or the living room and the babies stay in there (though they're not gated in. They're free to come join me in other parts of the house whenever they choose). But they genuinely enjoy staying in there, playing with toys, with eachother, listening to music, etc. IT'S THE BEST THING EVER!!

So here are some before and afters...and at the end, there's a video of the babies playing in their new playroom!

The picture Ethan picked out.

Hunter's

And Colton's...

Gotta love wall decals ON CLEARANCE at Target!!

Isn't a playroom more fun with kids in it?

One of our shelves..

The second shelf...

The third shelf...

Our playroom parking lot for all our vehicles...(The wine rack is going away,but I don't have room for it anywhere else at the moment...name your price if you want it! )

Our ball basket

The mirror which they LOVE...

How exciting that THIS playroom comes with friends!

And here's the video of the babies playing in their new room. (For the record, in case you were wondering, I allow the room to be messy the whole day and then I clean it up at night when they're in bed. You can bet I'm waiting for the day when THEY clean it up themselves! )

That's all folks!

And that's it for Day 5! 25 more to go....