So, in a previous blog with Erin, I wrote about the craziness of redoing Coco’s (13) room and the havoc it struck on the rest of the house. {Coco Room Apocalypse}  I now feel ready to defend, I mean explain, myself.  There had been an epidemic of teenage redecorating in her class and we were one of the last to fall victim.  We should have painted during the summer, but as Coco put it, “We were too busy living life.”  Well, we started living the high life of cleaning and sprucing up the week of Thanksgiving.  (I know, bad timing.  I already acknowledged this in the other post.)

So Jellybean (11) was helping me and chatting with me as I painted.  She says, “You should have known we would hate pink and purple when we were old.  I’m going to save time when I have kids and paint my girls’ rooms blue to start with.”

This indeed sounded like a good idea as I was drowning hummingbirds and butterflies in Caribbean Blue.  Coco, Frank, and I had already spent hours removing the trellis wallpaper border that completed the garden gazebo theme.

By the way, just don’t do wallpaper. The horror on the Home Depot clerk’s face when I began my request, “Where is the wallpaper…,” was only trumped by his relief when I ended the sentence with the word, “remover.”

Garden Gazebo Theme. Pregnancy hormones must have deluded me into thinking wallpaper border and stenciling were good ideas.

In my defense, Coco’s room was decorated 11 years ago when Jellybean overtook the nursery.  Eleven years.  My Coco is not so much a pack rat as a prolific creator and collector of stuff. She then tends to bury this stuff away and then promptly forget all about it.  So really, she is more of a happy-go-lucky squirrel than a nasty old rat.

So due to this squirreling, I am finding a treasure trove of Coco-ness shoved in boxes, books, and under furniture. My favorite find was the foreword to her first novel crediting her sister for inspiring the title.

I could go on (there was A LOT of stuff), but the specifics of my child’s preciousness doesn’t have to be detailed here. But, it all tugged at my heartstrings.  It also made me grateful that I had gotten pushed into the whole re-decorating slippery slope.  (And believe me; I did not embark on this project willingly.  You feel kinda attached to the dozens of pansies you lovingly hand-painted for your first born while six months pregnant with your second.  Hmmm… or maybe I just felt attached in the sense that I did not feel like sanding and priming all of those suckers.  I’m going to go with mother’s love over laziness, just for the sake of my next point).

So here is why I am grateful, even though I’m a little cracked from the whole snowballing project. Do you think that a surprise walk down memory lane would feel like warm nostalgia five years from now when Coco goes off to college??  No!  It would feel like sucker punches!  Sucker punches that could land me curled around a teddy bear longing to turn back time.

So I’m glad I didn’t have the forethought to decorate a 2 year-old’s room with her future teen self in mind. Otherwise, this massive clean-out might not have taken place until she leaped from the nest.  So criticize something else, Jellybean.  I’m letting Coco project HER view of self on her room and I’ve assembled a nice box of mementos that I can choose to open when I WANT that trip down memory lane.

So if you need me, I’ll be the one floating down the River “De-Nile” ignoring that Coco has 5 more years to squirrel away new landmines of preciousness for me to find.

Oh yeah, and in response to Jellybean’s pleas that her room, too, be repainted, I say, “In five years, all this can be yours.”

-Ellen

Finished product. It was worth it, right? Right!?!

Ellen – It is January and my house has not seen complete order since the weekend before Thanksgiving. It is bringing me down.  The walls are closing in.  For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to honor Coco’s request to redo her bedroom in the manner befitting a teenager.  Here is the insanity: I started all this on the Monday before Thanksgiving.  Get me some Haldol because I am clearly psychotic. Even before the holidays began, I started out so far behind the eight ball that I was not even in the billiard hall.

Erin-My friend Ellen is one of the smartest people I know.  I am not blowing sunshine up her you-know-what, but it’s important to note this in light of this decision she made.  I understand her rationale. Truly, I do. Frank had extra time off the week before Thanksgiving, so she would have help. BUUUUTTTT, if she had asked me, I might have mentioned that decluttering a teen’s room (eight bags of trash, no lie), stripping wall-paper, repainting a room, picking out a new bed, painting old furniture to match the new room, and putting the whole damn thing back together IN THE MIDDLE OF THE HOLIDAYS might be a tall order, even for her.  She pulled it off, of course, and only had one meltdown much later in the holidays when Shutterfly’s site got twitchy as she was trying to finish her presents.

Ellen – Um, had more than one meltdown, but I try not to take every tantrum public.  And Erin is presenting the summary of the story as seen from the end of the tunnel of hindsight.  The project snowballed, people!  Snow! Balled!  We were just painting the room to match the comforter she got for her birthday this summer. I did not know I would be digging through the basement searching for the vanity that I remembered was left as a “gift” from the previous owners of our house, because Coco expressed interest in a $900 Pottery Barn Teen vanity.  I did not know that aforementioned vanity would take 8, yes 8, cans of spray paint to cover its dried-out surfaces.  I did not know that the first bed would come damaged.  I didn’t know; but I should have known.

HOWEVER, I have now found a scapegoat for all of my misery, and her name is Erin. It is really Erin’s fault all of this took place in November, because she was busy dragging me and my crew all over the countryside this summer making us have fun.  We should not have been splashing through waterfalls, we should have been painting!

BUT, this room project is going to be fodder for another blog because quite frankly, it is too soon.  Too soon!  So, what I want to talk about is how Erin keeps her zen in a house filled with 7 people, 4 of which are boys.  I did ask her advice.

Erin- I am not a neat person by design.  Ask my poor sister or my college roommates.  I tend toward disorder and chaos, but I was holding it together.  I was getting it done. The fifth kid was a game changer.  Our slight shift in number represented a cosmic shift in our universe. We had become the very embodiment of the scientific concept that systems left to themselves tend towards disorder. Um, yeah, and then some.  My newly super sized crew meant that I needed to learn some new skills and quick or we would be invited to star in the next episode of “Hoarders”.  Cue my lovely friend, Lauri, our organized Sister.  We all think she rocks.  She assessed the situation and gave me advice. Proud to say that we are now clean-as-you-go converts. Occasionally, we let this golden rule slide, and things start looking like a market in Calcutta in no time flat.

 The close proximity of so many people means that occasionally all you desire is to breathe your own air and listen to yourself think.  To this end, we also respect that one room in the house is the Oasis.  For us, it’s the master bedroom. No clutter, no mess, no dirty ugly reminders of the business taking place in the rest of the house.  I can’t be the evil ogre mom and outlaw food in the family room (I LOVE popcorn with my movies!) nor do I feel like harping on every errant shoe, belt, or ball.  But I will disappear into the Oasis and take a load off.  I will put my head down on a well-made bed and pick up a neatly stacked book from my bedside table and drift away for a few minutes.  Pure heaven.

Ellen- It is a wonderful system, but just listen to what it has spawned.  Loopholes developed. The order may be a Mirage.  But hey, I would settle for things looking good at a distant at this point.

Erin- So, one piece of advice was to make the beds every day. Great idea. Everything looks neat and tidy. Mental space opens up. Deep Breath and AHHHHH.  Well, my peeps did not get the memo. I was violating the Dymowski Law of Inertia.  They were going to resist this change in their momentum. My brilliant offspring, mostly because they are future men, have taken my edict to make beds and morphed it to their own ends.   They make their beds once a week and then sleep on top of their freshly made beds with whatever blankets they can find.   This is why I had to bring in the big guns.  There is a genetic laziness that could threaten our happy, little home if left unchecked.   

Ellen- I personally think it is an IQ test and that they passed.  But clearly the Sisterhood Secret is to clean-as-you-go, because it is easier to sweep up a mole hill than to sandblast a mountain.  I have used this technique, but like intense cardio, I have let it slide during the holidays.  But I defy anyone to say that this technique would have succeeded against the Coco Room Apocalypse.  If I can ever get to baseline again (take the Christmas decorations down) I swear I will once again clean-as -I -go.

And just in case you think I’m one of those uptight women that needs a Valium if the vacuum tracks aren’t lined up in the same direction or if you think I am using hyperbole for comedic effect; I have two words for you: photographic evidence.

In order to time the project so that Frank could help me take down the wallpaper, we just hauled everything out of Coco's room without sorting.

Coco had 11 years to squirrel away her treasures. But I do have to give her props that she readily tossed things when forced to do so.

 Ellen- Now excuse me, I have to go excavate for an Oasis.

Want to see how Coco’s room turned out? Click to Read More.