Room Switch (Or, Baseboard Cleaning Part 3)

I have not yet walked upstairs at midnight, having just driven back from some far away city after a late night concert, shuffled into the dark room with my tie unknotted and a glass of scotch in hand, kicked off my shoes, and sat down on James.

But one of these nights I'm going to do just that, because we switched rooms.

James and Owen now have our big "master" bedroom, and J and I have moved ourselves out over the garage. So far everyone loves it.

We decided that we didn't have enough stuff to justify the big room. It was mostly empty, and all we really need are a bed, two end tables, a treadmill, and a dresser.

James and Owen, meanwhile, have a beautiful blank hardwood canvas to cover with a bazillion LEGOs and Hot Wheels. Actually, no to that. Picking up the LEGOs from their room was a traumatic enough experience for everyone that we decided to change up the rules about which toys they can have out. No matter what we moved, whether it was an old baseboard heater, a dresser drawer full of jewelry and nail polishes, or a crate full of library books, it was sure to have at least a dozen LEGO pieces at the bottom of it. In Owen's pants drawer we actually found a fully-assembled LEGO Jurassic Park jeep that he had apparently hidden (to keep it away from Felix) and then forgotten about before anyone could disassemble it and throw it into the collective heap.

Here were the major challenges of moving rooms:
-Scotch tape everywhere. Literally whole rolls worth of scotch tape to be peeled off of floors, windows, walls, doors, and furniture. A blanket ban is now in effect. Those kids are never allowed to have their own roll of scotch tape again.

-Stickers everywhere. Mostly in horribly hard to reach places like right at the baseboard level underneath the bunk beds, or in the corners of the walls where they meet the ceilings.

-Children that stand right in front of where you're about to step as soon as you pick up a heavy piece of furniture and only get out of the way when you threaten to set the bedframe down on top of them.

-Finding discrete ways to throw away half-broken toys that you know the kids would want to keep if they saw them but would never have any chance of actually playing with again.

The project ended up taking two full days, the first of which was entirely peeling off strips of tape and stickers. But we really are all happy with how it turned out. And do you know why it's such a remarkable thing that I could accidentally walk into James and Owen's room and mistake it for my own?

Because, at the moment, the floor isn't covered in LEGOs.