Simplifying

My teenager is 13 and is very artsy and creative.  She finds beauty in all things and I love learning from her point of view.  I knew minimalizing her room would be a balance.  I want to respect her artistic eye and creativity, and allow her to keep things that make her happy and feel at home in her own space in this great big world!

But…her room was becoming a health hazard!  Keeping all things that are beautiful to her eye quickly ends up in clutter.  Plus she is your typical girl teen that loves makeup and girly stuff.  I had to get creative with how to corral all of this type of stuff so we can get in there to even dust!

I did her room while she was at school (much more peaceful that way if you know what I mean!) but kept reminding myself to respect her stuff.  The items I thought she could get rid of I placed in a small bin and had her go through it when she got home.  When she was younger, I would just get rid of stuff on the sly, and she never knew. Now that she is older I want to respect who she is and keep trust in our relationship, so I made sure I didn’t get rid of anything but trash….which really cleared up the room!

We will start with some “before” pics so you can appreciate the “after.” {smile}

We only have 2 bathrooms and the 2nd is very small and upstairs, so Teagan gets ready in her room.  The mirror area is where she does her makeup/hair.  By having her desk so close to this area, it constantly was being used as a catch all instead of for homework or getting creative.  I knew we needed to remedy this problem.

Under her bed?  90% of it was trash.  Easy to clean up.  I also grabbed a bed frame that was in our garage that sits quite high so sweeping under her bed is now a breeze.  It is high enough to see under from the door so I will know if things start getting stuffed under there.  {smile}

Ok, enough before pics.  Here is what I did with her desk.  I moved it over to a different wall, away from her beauty area.  She now uses it for her duct tape business, creating & studying.  Do you love how she made a smiley face on her plant pot?  That made me smile.

I topped her desk with things that I knew were important to her.  The beaded elephant was her special purchase from Disney.  The white pot she made herself.  The wooden piggy bank she also made in shop class at school.  Her little water fountain is a fun touch to the room.  Those baskets hold crafting supplies.  Isn’t the stool cute?  She painted that one day & I just love it.

See how high up her bed is now?  Very helpful for keeping it clean.  I put her table and lamp right by the bed and a little catch- all bowl.  Right now it has packages of gum and mints in it.

If I would have taken “before” pics of this area, you would see all kinds of stuff (scarves, necklaces, whistles) hanging from those shutters.  I couldn’t stand the clutter so I found creative ways to deal with those things, which I will share later in the post.  I did allow her to keep her Roo’s hanging there.

Oh if only you could have seen the “before” of these shelves.  It looked very much like the “before” of her desk.    I found those plastic drawer organizers on sale at Target for 2 bucks each.  So perfect for all the little things my girl values but has no place for.  Can you see her creative brain working on the top of the bookshelves?

The little wooden sticks in the bottom left corner with goggly eyes belonged to her Great Grandpa.  I love how special they are to her…she is the perfect person to cherish such a fun and quirky object.  She made the gargoyle in clay class, and drew the dragon a couple years ago.  In that box is her wand from Harry Potter World.  All things that matter to her.

She has a business called Twisted Tape.  These two shelves hold her tape and inventory.  There are cabinets under these shelves that hold her mailing supplies.

I had to get a system for her accessories.  They were just scattered and made dusting impossible.  I brought in little platters, one for bracelets, one for rings, one for bobby pins and hair elastics.  I took a good look what made up the bulk of her clutter and made little homes for those items.

I took my own advice from my post 14 Ways To Organize A Bedroom, and used #2 to organize her 10 scarves.  I also used the idea of #7 and put a tension rod across the bottom shelf of her bookshelf where her necklaces now hang.  I didn’t get a photo, but both have been working really well!

It is helpful to use platters to corral beauty products, too.  I’m so glad I had these on hand.  Garage sales and thrift stores are great for finding these.

I only allow one collection displayed per girl.  This is Teagan’s snow globe collection.  She has been collecting since she was itty bitty.  Also a couple clay pots she made in school when she was younger.

More containers to organize her makeup.  I did her room a few weeks ago these little containers make the world of difference.  She has been able to keep her room quite clean…and if it does get messy, she knows exactly where to put things.  Everything has a home in her room now.

The finished product.  She was happy with it and ended up getting rid of most of the stuff in the bin.  I would not call her room minimal, but it is organized and she feels happy when in there, and it is no longer a health hazard!

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Not anymore!  In less than 45 minutes, the cabinet & 3 drawers were minimalized & organized.  There was not much to giveaway, but a ton to throw away!  Old, empty bottles, dried up polish, broken curling irons.

As you can see in the above picture, we keep towels (more on towels later), & first aid on the upper shelf.  Underneath I have a bin for beauty products on the right, a bin for manicure supplies in the middle, & a bin of natural ingredients to make some of my natural beauty products…like Homemade Natural Lip Balm.

These cabinets are deep, which I love, so behind the bins I have several different sized curling irons.

The 2nd drawer holds all things hair.  I have 3 girls.  Age 13, 12 & 9.  With girls comes lots of girly hair “stuff.”

~The first bucket has bobby pins and hair elastics.
~The second bucket has fun little bows that my 9 year old still wears.
~The third bucket has headbands that they all wear.
~The fourth bucket holds combs and brushes.

On to the bottom drawer.

Like I said, I am a cosmetologist/hairstylist.  I have not worked in a salon for over 10 years but I still have fun doing friends/sisters/daughters hair.  This bottom drawer is everything I need for that.

On to the process:

It only minutes to get to this stage, because I took everything to the dining room table.

I started with getting rid of obvious trash.  I then started putting “like with like” into piles.

This is about halfway through.  I washed the bins out as I went.  They were gross.

Let’s talk towels.  If you read my bathroom makeover post, you will know that we have hooks in our bathroom for towels.  Each family member has their own hook and a different color.  The towels you see here on the right are for guests.  The towels you see on the left are old towels that I use when coloring peoples hair.  The grey washcloths are…well..grey wash clothes.  The girls and I use them to wash our faces.

I love our towel system.  I am no longer washing towels 24/7, and I no longer have to cringe when I  hear “SOMEBODY please bring me a towel” after a child gets into the shower without a towel.  They are always there, on the hook, and I wash them once a week or more if needed.

Ok, I know this does not look minimal, especially the nail polish bin…BUT WE LOVE manicures around here.  It is something we do often, as I AM a professional you know.  It is something my girls like to do when they have friends over.  Speaking of friends over, our neighbor girl was over when I was cleaning and she is the one who went through each and every nail polish, throwing out the ones that were old and thick.  What a sweetie!

As far as beauty products, this is not too bad for a house of girls, huh?

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More in this series:

We don’t have a huge backyard, so the girls play in the front yard quite often.  Especially when using their roller blades, ripsticks, bikes & scooters.  Our garage connected to the back of the house, so we like to keep these things that they use often in the sunroom to make it easy on them to grab and play.

I started with making piles of things.  Like with like.  It helped to get whatever looked like trash out first.  Then I had office supply pile, an earring pile, a pile of hair bands & combs, a pile of papers that needed attention, and some miscellaneous stuff.

So on to the scary stairs.  I shared this picture in an earlier post.  I confessed to loading things onto the stairs as I minimalized rooms instead of putting things away.  Now for the most part, it is not as lazy as it looks, because most of that stuff DOES go upstairs.  But it had piled up way worse than I ever let it, as the rest of my house was getting minimalized.

Ahhh…so much better.

After my house is minimalized, I will be turning my attention to some home projects.  Something I’ve wanted to do for awhile was get rid of ugly stair carpet and refinish the stairs in some way.  I have been collecting some fun ideas on my Home: Floors board at Pinterest.

Those 3 baskets that you see in my pic above are for the 3 rooms upstairs.  The master bedroom, the craft room and my daughters room.  My husband is convinced they just collect clutter and just “whatever” gets thrown in there, even stuff that does not belong.  He has got a point.

Am I better off without them?  OR do we enforce consequences to little ones who put things in the wrong basket or things that do not belong on the stairs in them?  It would also help to mark the baskets so there is NO excuse.

Advice?

How about this idea for baskets on the stairs is from Sew Many Ways?  She calls them crap baskets and has one for each family member.  That is an idea!  She puts whatever she finds around the house in the baskets and they are responsible for putting them away.  Maybe this would be a better idea for me.  I only have 3 baskets for the 3 areas upstairs, but this idea might be better.

How do you handle stairs and the things that belong up them?

I love hearing that you are all minimalizing too, so let me know if you are!

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More In This Series:

Minimalizing My Living Room
Minimalizing My Dining Room
My Big Fail While Minimalizing
Minimalizing My Sunroom