Kids Organization Series - Kids Summer Bedroom Redesign

Hey guys, on the podcast this week, I'm trying something totally different. And I'm actually doing a Zoom recording. So if you're watching me on YouTube or in Facebook, you can actually see me right now. And the reason I'm doing that is because we are kicking off a 3-week kids organization series. Now adults, do not stop listening because kids are listening to this podcast all year long. And I'm talking about organizing very adult things. But these next 3 weeks, I'm going to be focusing primarily on kids, kids ages 7 to 21. So if you're 7 to 21 or even 23, most of what I'm going to talk about is going to be relevant. Maybe not all of you are going to be ready to do it, but most of you will. And today what I want to talk about is we're going to make a diagram of your bedroom. So I have some graph paper here. I have a pencil. I have a ruler. I have a marker just because I want you to be able to see what I'm doing. I have some Post-it notes. And this is something that I did as a kid all the time because I was one of those kids. And I would create diagrams of my room and then I would use Post-it notes to move around the furniture and then I would physically move around the furniture. So I'm going to show you how I did this. First of all, you want to get— this is going to use a lot of your school supplies that were in your backpack. You want to get out the graph paper that you have from math class, and you're going to first measure whatever room you want to put furniture in. In this case, we're going to do my son's bedroom. It is 10 by 10. Now, a 10 by 10 bedroom is not large. And when we think about redecorating our room or moving things around in any space that we have. The thing that you generally cannot change are the actual walls of the room. So we're just going to take those as a given, and we're going to measure those out on our graph paper. Now the first thing you want to do on your graph paper is count how many squares you have across and how many squares you have from the top to the bottom. So I've already done that. I know that I have 30 squares side to side and I have 41 squares top to bottom. So with a 10 by 10 room, I could make my squares 30 by 30. So I have a bigger picture of what my room will look like. So I'm going to go ahead and do that. Let me pause and I'll be right back. If you're listening to this on the podcast, you're going to want to click the link inside to see what I'm doing in this video. There's a link to the video. Just double tap on the artwork and you'll be able to get to the show notes. Or go to organized365.com/kids and we're adding this podcast right into that page. So you'll be able to find it there as well. All right, here is my drawing of my son's room. Now I will tell you, in general, when I use graph paper, I usually have 2 squares equal 1 foot, but I made 3 squares equal 1 foot in this instance for 2 reasons. Number one, a child's bedroom usually can have 3 squares equal 1 foot. And when 3 of these squares equal 1 real foot in your room, then 1 square equals 4 inches. And in organizing a bedroom as many times as I did, you can really play around a lot with that 4 inches. Okay, so here's my son's bedroom, and I want to show you some of the extra things that I've drawn on here. My grandfather was an architect and he showed me how to draw on proper windows and doors. But today I just made up a couple of new architectural drawing things. So some of these are not like architecturally— First of all, you want to draw the entire room. And I did that in pencil so I could see how big my square was. And then this thing that looks like a fan is an opening door. So wherever you have a door, you need to figure out how big is that door opening that you would walk through. And then you make a line of the door as if the door was half open, and then you connect that like a semicircle to the wall so that when you're designing your room, you remember, I can't plan anything in this part of my room because there is a door that opens there. Now next to this open door, you'll see where I have broken my line here and I've written the word closet. Now my son's room does have a closet door. But I've taken the door off. So I don't have to allow for room for a door to swing open into the room. I don't need to make that fan. But I do need to leave this space unblocked because that is where the closet is. So here's where you come in the room. You can't block this and you can't block this. So basically this whole part of the room here, I can't put any furniture in. Now if you go a little further across from the door, we have this Square that's on the wall. And this, this rectangle, these extra lines that I've drawn here, this is how you draw a window. And that means that we can put furniture in front of that. Not a tall dresser. But currently my son's bed is in front of the window and it doesn't block the window. You could block the window if you want to. It just— I like to have natural light. So knowing where the windows are when you're designing is important. Now those are all architecturally correct, but I've since added in Lisa architecture. So a couple of things I know as a mom and also in redoing bedroom after bedroom after bedroom is it's very, very important to know where your electrical outlets are. So I've just put little X's with circles around them where I know that the outlets are. There's an outlet right next to the closet. There's an outlet right next to the window. There's an outlet on the middle of this wall and on the middle of this wall. They actually end up being on the middle of each of these walls. And then the last thing that I've noted that has been a problem, because my son's bedroom is not big— a 10 by 10 bedroom is a pretty small bedroom. So I've made this little 3 by 1 square here, and there's a V in there, and that means vent. That's where the heat and air conditioning comes into his room from the floor. So if I put a bed against this wall, I have to leave it, you know, 6 inches out away from the wall. It can't go right up flush to the wall. So when you are designing your room, that's important. So 3 of these squares equals 1 foot, and this is a 10 by 10 room. So here's our room. Now this is the fun part. Well, all of it's fun to me. But once you have this done, you could even get it Xeroxed, or you can make a couple of copies. And this is your master plan of your bedroom, or adults, if you're listening, you could Do this for your, your bedroom or any room in your house. Now I love to use Post-it notes for my movable furniture. And usually if I had only 2 squares equaling 1 foot, I would be able to get most furniture on 1 Post-it note. But because I made my room so big on my paper, I'm going to sometimes need to use 2 Post-it notes. Now my son does not have very much furniture. But he does have a bed and he has a single bed. He's currently sleeping in it, so I did not go measure it. But what I did is I'm putting a piece of Post-it note on this, on this graph paper, and I'm putting it on there so that it's perfectly in the corners. I'm showing you this on the video. See how it's perfectly lined up so that there's no overlap, like each square on the Post-it note is going to be equal. And you could see I've already done in pencil some hashtags. Every— and it's a little bit hard to see on this video, but every 3 blocks, 1, 2, 3 blocks, there's a hashtag. Let me do that in marker so it shows up a little bit bigger. I'm just doing this to show you how I create measurements. Remember, 3 blocks equals 1 foot. Okay, you could see a little bit better now. See those. Hash marks. So this right here is a 1-foot square, and 1 foot, like, is basically the size of this paper. It's a pretty small space. So his bed is, I think, 6 feet by 3 feet. So I'm going to count over 1, 2, 3. This is where his bed would stop, and then down 6. But do you see I'm out of— I don't have enough to go 1, 2, 3, 4. I need 5, 6. So what I'm going to do is take the same colored Post-it note and I'm going to use the sticky part and I'm going to stick the sticky part on the bottom of this one. See how now it's like a long big Post-it note. If you have big Post-it notes, that works. But I like to just work with whatever I have. So that works for me. So I'm going to make more hash marks going all the way down so I know how far a foot is. And I go 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. It stops right here. Now I'm going to get out my scissors. You guys, in the summer when I was a kid, I would redo my room over and over and over again, and then I would just design future homes. Alright, so you see where this line is. We need to be pretty straight with our cutting, but see how I'm cutting this piece off. I don't need this piece. And then I'm going to cut the longer piece also. And look, I didn't cut it correctly. So I'm just going to cut a little bit more off. And now let's go over to my paper. See how close I am. You should know I'm not a perfectionist, so you can keep going back with your Post-it notes until you have it just perfect because you got plenty of time. It's summer. Okay, so pretty good. Yeah, I did pretty good. I need to trim it up just a little bit more. Okay, now I'm going to— I'm just measuring it right now on here. So I have 1, 2, 3 feet this way, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 feet this way. 6 by 3. Now look at that in that picture of that room. That bed is pretty big, right? There are only a couple of places that my son can put his bed in his room. He could put it under the window. Like this. See, we don't hit that vent. So that's perfect. We keep it a little bit away from the wall and he could still access that outlet there for charging all of his devices. Or we have put his bed here on this wall like this, and we just don't block that vent there. And his is here and he has a headboard on his bed. So that works. Okay. We've also flipped it so that his bed is this way. And his head of the bed is here and we have an open space down here and his bed will perfectly fit on this wall. When you walk into his room, there's no room— like his bed is right there, but you can walk in. Those are the 4 places we could put his bed in his room. So even though this is a small room, we've really found a lot of places that we can put his bed. Part of why we're able to move his bed around is because he does not have a dresser. He has drawers underneath his bed. That are part of his dresser. So now you can make more furniture in your room. And let's make a couple of the other pieces that Joey has. So I am going to just put a Post-it note on here again. And again, I'm, I'm guessing, but I'm pretty accurate with my guessing. His desk, I think, is 4 feet long, which a Post-it note is for perfectly. I'm not going to have to cut that one at all. But I think it's 4 feet this way as well. Maybe 3.5. It's 3.5 this way. So how do you do a half? All right, here's 1, 2. Can you see what I'm doing? 1, 2, 3. Remember, a Post-it note is a perfect 4. So 1, 2, 3, 4. So if I want a half, I have to divide these 3 in half, which will be 1.5 right here. So I'm going to make that square first. I'm just going to cut off that little 1.5 squares at the bottom. As you do this, you'll realize the closer your Post-it notes are to actually being accurate, the easier it's going to be for you to do your room. Okay, so now this desk is actually like this. I'm just going to freehand this and cut this little part out because this is what his desk looks like. It's one of those L-shaped desks that has a round here. So this is his desk. Now that I have more than one piece of Post-it note, I'm going to start labeling them. So I have the bed. I have the desk. All right. Now I happen to have other colored Post-it notes. Look, I have these little teeny tiny ones and I'm going to make some other things. So he has a refrigerator in his bedroom because I'm a great mom, right? Yeah. Let's put that on the list. His refrigerator is, is 2 feet by 2 feet. Is it 2 feet by 2 feet? Perfect. It can't be that big. Must be 18 inches by 18 inches. Perfect. Another math problem. Okay, so 18 inches is a foot and a half. So I'm gonna mark my feet on here. And you could do this in pencil so you don't see the little lines later if you want to, or I'll show you how to make your little Post-it notes perfect at the end. All right, so this little Post-it note I have, this is a 1 by 1. And we need it to be 1.5, right? 18 inches is 1.5 feet. So, and this is 2. So I've got a 3 block here. I'm going to divide that in half. That's— this will be 18 inches and I'll divide this one in half. Now I've got 18 by 18. It's a very different kind of podcast. I was thinking last night, I was like, I want this to really be A— these 3 podcasts to really be fun for all of you guys who listen to me all year and I talk about all the adult stuff. I really want these podcasts to be fun for you. So we're doing it as a video. So you're listening to it as a podcast. It's probably not making as much sense, but this is for the kids. So we're doing it that way. All right, I'm gonna get one more color Post-it note because I'm Post-it note happy and I have lots of Post-it notes. And I'm going to use pink for this one. And the one thing that I told you last summer in the series about organizing for kids is that pretty much every single bedroom needs to have a cube system or a bookshelf in it. It's really going to help you organize your bedroom if you have a bookshelf or like an IKEA cube or a Target cube or these cube systems. They're about $100. Babysit and save up. Alright, so we're going to add in a cube system and the IKEA 4x4 cube system I already know is 5 feet wide. So we have 1, 2, 3, 4. Remember, a Post-it note in our room is only 4 feet wide. So we're going to have to add another Post-it note in order to make this 5 feet wide. And I'm just going to overlap it a little bit more than I did last time. It doesn't, it doesn't matter where you overlap them. I've kept my adhesive on the same side. So now they're overlapped and you could tape them together if you want to. So it's 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. So they're 5 wide. So I'm just gonna cut, you know, the equivalent of 1 foot off of here. Now I have the right length, but obviously they're not this fat. They are only a little bit more than 1 foot deep. So here we are on my graph paper. 1, 2, 3. This is 1 foot deep. I'm going to have you cut this just a little bit bigger. Let's go 1 square bigger, which is only 4 inches bigger. But the reason why is because you don't want to put things right next to your bookshelf anyway, and that'll remind you. So let's cut that. And then wherever you put this bookshelf, remember, you're going to want to be able to put— pull things on, off, and on. And this is the IKEA one. That's the one I'm giving you the measurements for. This is the IKEA. It's called Kallax, K-A-L-L-A-X. And this is the 4 by 4 unit. That's how big this one is. Joey used to have one of those. He doesn't right now. Um, yeah, that's all that fits in his room. Okay, so now we're back to Joey's room. We have a bed, we have a desk, we have a refrigerator, and we have this IKEA unit. So currently, here's how his room is set up. This is so fun. He has his bed over by the window and he has his refrigerator right next to it. And you could see that that just perfectly gives him enough room to get into his closet. So when you walk in his room, there's plenty of room right here, right? Except that we put this desk here. So his desk is— as soon as you get in the room, you see his desk and then his IKEA unit is over here. And then he has this space, but there's actually junk over there because it is a kid's bedroom, you know. So when you actually go to move your furniture in your bedroom, here's what you're going to notice. You have a couple of big pieces. This refrigerator or your nightstand or your little stuff, they could go out of your bedroom door and go put them in the hallway or like out of your bedroom. But usually your bed, your desk, definitely this IKEA cube unit, you can empty stuff off of it so it's easier to move them, but they aren't going to go all the way outside of the bedroom. So let's say I wanted to put the bed on this wall. Here's how this happens in reality. You end up moving this desk, you close the door, you're like stuck in the room, you end up moving the desk, doo doo doo doo doo, and you move it over here, which is not where the desk is going to end up. And then you end up moving the bed. Do, do, do, do, do, do, do, like this. And then you end up sliding this IKEA unit down the wall. By the way, make sure you have permission to do this before you do it in your bedroom. I usually did it when I was in trouble and sent to my room as punishment. Okay, so you slide this down to do, do, do, do, do, do, do. Now it's down on this wall. Now you scoot the bed in a little bit more to do, do, do, do, do. And then you slide this piece over here to do like this. And now you can— even if you want the bed to be on this wall, you need to finish moving the bed on this wall first and then move the desk over here. And then you can slide the bed back up this way. I hope all that got on the video. Moving big pieces of furniture in a small bedroom is part of the puzzle. And when you have it on here, first of all, you're going to notice in this room, it happens to be this IKEA unit perfectly fits on this wall, which is awesome. This is a great place for this IKEA unit to be. I must have made that wall too long because it fits there perfectly. This bed fits perfectly in 4 places. This desk, because we got an L-shaped desk, it's a little hard because see how you've got this stick Sticking out like this is our piece, our— the— of the puzzle that's kind of hard to figure out where to go. Now when the room's set up this way, it's skinny to get in, but look at how much space you have in the, in the middle to do stuff. This is a great way if you want the space in front of your window to sit on the floor or whatever you want to do. This is a great way to do this. My son does not like facing the wall with his desk and he has a TV on top of this. And he doesn't like the shadow from the window on the TV. So even though I think this is the best way to organize this room, he likes this TV away from that window. So it needs to be on this wall. And if it has to be on this wall somewhere, then really the only place for our bed to be is here. And this isn't enough. Oh, I wonder if we could do that. This isn't enough space to get into the desk because actually the long part is here. So the desk Because we want this IKEA unit on this wall, the desk has to be here. Unless he would let me put the desk or the IKEA unit here and the desk here. But he says no. And the reason why he says no is because he doesn't want to be looking at his desk and people to come in from behind him and scare him. See what I mean? There's a lot of thought that goes on into this. I know you kids understand what I'm saying. So this is how he likes his room to be done. He's 18. We've been rearranging this room since he was 3. Starting at the age of 3, I let the kids rearrange their room and I obviously move everything. And this is where he is happiest. Bring the refrigerator back in. This is where he is happiest right now, sitting in the bed with no shadow on the TV on the long wall and being able to sit at his desk and see people as they come in and out of his room. This is his happy place. So anyway, the whole reason that I recorded this video and this podcast for you is because summer— in these 3 podcasts, we're going to talk about what are the things that you don't have time to do during the school year that you could do in the summer that would really help you have a great school year. So my son's getting ready to go off to college and we're trying to figure out what is going to fit in his apartment. You may be figuring out what's going to fit in a dorm room, dorm room, or maybe you just Finished college and you're trying to figure out what will fit in your new apartment or your new condo, or you've moved back home and your parents don't want all of your stuff, and I don't blame them. So where are we going to put that? I suggest you get a storage unit for stuff that's going to be for your future apartment and only put in your, your current apartment, which is your bedroom, what will fit, which means the majority of your stuff isn't going to fit. So you're going to need to either get an offsite storage unit, which is what I highly recommend. Or move it all into your parents' basement and garage, but you're looking for independence and they are too. So let's do a storage unit. They're not that expensive. I mean, they're $50 to $100 a month. That's not a ton of— I mean, that's, that's not a little bit of money, but you're also living at home for free. So start paying that as practice for how much rent or an apartment is going to be. This is going to really help you with all of that. Also, maybe you've never even thought about rearranging your room before. And when you start rearranging a room, even though this is a lot of great planning and practice, you're actually going to see other things happen as you arrange your room. Whenever my kids rearrange their room, they usually get rid of some piece of furniture and a whole lot of other stuff. So they'll get rid of a nightstand or they'll get rid of a stool that's in their room or, I don't know, other stuff. And then like the other day, because they're teenagers now. They were driving down the street and someone was getting rid of this little black table and they picked it up and brought it home and put it in their room like it's your apartment. So, so organize your furniture like it's your apartment. And really think about, you know, when I was showing you Joey's room, how he decided why he wants this in his room. If this was my bedroom, I would want to sit in front of that window every night, like every single night. Still, even now I have it so I could see my window and I'm as close to my window. I'm actually working in my bedroom now. And I am constantly thinking about how can I get my desk as close to that window as possible. If this was my bedroom, my desk would be right by this window so I could be working right here or sitting on the floor. My bed would be somewhere else because the most important thing to me in a bedroom is where the window is, which means where the sunlight is, which means where the warmth is. I'm kind of like a cat. I'll curl up in front of the window and take a nap. Like, I really will on the floor curl up in front of the window and take a nap. After school every day, starting at about 4th grade, I would go into the kitchen. I would get a Lipton iced tea lemonade that I made with the powdered stuff, and I would mix it up in a cup. And then I would get a bag of pretzels. I was allowed to eat in my bedroom, and I would take it in my room, and I would sit on the floor in front of my window, and I would do my homework, and I would listen to my music, and I would do my drawings and my plannings and whatever I wanted, eating Pretzels and iced tea, and I loved it. So think about you and your bedroom and how you can rearrange what you have. And then also, if this is your mini apartment, is there anything that you want to buy for it? Is there a little piece of furniture that you want to buy? In my daughter's room, which is just a little bit bigger, she has a couch, she has a vanity, she does not have a desk. She does have an IKEA unit and she has a hamster on top of hers. Her room is very different than my son's. So if you are just finding out about me and you're just thinking, oh, I can rearrange my bedroom. Well, yes, but you might want to know how to clean it first. So go back to the podcast that I did last year. They start with 103, episode 103, or you can just go to organize365.com/kids. This podcast will be at the top. You'll be able to watch the video if you're still listening and not watching the video. And then below that will be all the podcasts I've recorded last summer that were for organizing your bedroom, and then a couple that I recorded in the fall about organizing your collections. The only thing I'll say is I did not realize, boys, you were listening to me last summer. So how to organize your bedroom, I say she and, and a lot of girly stuff. But now I know you're listening. And our kids program that's coming out in 2019 will be for boys and girls. And I'm just going to apologize in advance for talking so much about girls in the first 4 podcasts. You guys, this is awesome. I want to see, I want to see you guys do this. Yes, I was a math teacher, but see, math can be really fun. Take pictures of this, put them on Facebook, or I'm actually on Instagram. If you're on Instagram, I'm Organized 365. Please tag me @Organized365. I would love to like it and comment it. And if you give me permission, I would love to share how you guys are organizing your bedroom on my Facebook page and my Instagram story. All right guys, I will be back next week and we will be doing more kid organization.