The Great Room Redo--Boys Edition

Ever since we did the floors in our living room and kitchen and got new furniture and moved things around in the family areas of the house, we have been talking about what we could do in the boys' room to give them a little more space. Also, we wanted to find the space for a desk to go in there. Raley is in 6th grade and starting in the gifted program and that will entail more projects and homework for him. While he doesn't mind doing his homework in the dining room and he isn't bothered by the bustle around him, it does distract him. My husband was always the type to need absolute quiet when reading or studying whereas I like background noise.
So the first thing we wanted them to do was go through everything and get rid of what they didn't play with anymore and anything that was broken. Then to put all the rest of it in its proper place. Here's a before picture:

And yes, I am actually cringing as I post this. Their room looked like this a HUGE percentage of the time! They would spend all day cleaning it (with me yelling at them and interceding during the many fights) and by the next afternoon we would be right back here! Very frustrating :(
What you can't see in this picture is the corner at the end of their beds (it would be to the far left) where their dirty clothes hampers were. Unfortunately, their dirty clothes were more often on the floor of the closet. The closet is small for two boys to share. It had their games and puzzles on the shelf, their shirts were hanging with Raley's to the right and Clay's to the left. Under their shirts was a three drawer plastic dresser thingy with their socks, undies, jammies, shorts/pants. There was a tiny space in the very center between the dressers where the boys would stand to dress. There jammies or clothes from the day more often than not ended up in a heap here. Because, honestly, it is SOOOO hard for young boys to grab them off the floor, close the closet door and drop them in the hamper, right?
Under their beds where two long rectangular storage boxes that had their costumes and dress-up things. We went through these first and most of them were too small or too ripped up for any further use. We were able to condense them all into one box which left us one free. This was the best! thing! ever!! because we used the other one to store.....ALL THE LEGOS! The Legos used to be a bin in the storage cubbies but they would dump the whole thing out to dig for the ones they needed. And of course once you find the one you are looking for you are WAY too excited to put the others back! Now they can pull out the whole tray-type box and find what they need without dumping anything. Then slide the box back  under the bed. This was a HUGE first step.
As they threw away or put things into the donate piles, we were able to empty out a few of the storage cubes. They had a total of 9; a double stacked row of 4 across and one that stood upright for the guns and swords and stuff. There was also the small 3 drawer cart you can see in the photo above (it's white). As they emptied out cubbies, we put them into the closet on the shelf. We had previously cleared out the shelf in there by putting the games and puzzles that were there up on the shelf we put up in the room.
Now that we knew what we had, we planned out where to put everything to make room for the desk. We were able to empty out the white drawer cart completely and take it out of the room (it has found a new home in the gym). Then we looked at the closet. We decided to try a new system in there. We ended up going with the Rubbermaid wire closet system at Lowe's. On one side we added three shelves that the boys use for their undies, socks, shorts, pants, and jammies.

On the opposite side we hung two shelves with a bar for their shirts.

This left the center clear for the dirty clothes hampers! Now when the dress, they can drop what they were wearing DIRECTLY into the appropriate hamper. It is working out perfectly. The shelf in there has only a couple large items they don't play with often but wanted to keep. Like RoboRaptor.

Now that the hampers weren't in the corner, we could put a stack of cubbies in there. Raley's personal cubby is the one on top and his stuffed animals have a new perch there too.

There used to be some old-school plastic cubbies on the wall at the end of their beds. They were Jayme's in college! They had books, knick-knacks and anything the boys wanted to have ready access to. All of the stuff found new homes as well and so did the old-school cubby (it went to Pattie's room which I'll post about later). The books went on the shelf and so did the knick-knacks.

That left only 5 cubbies on the floor. We stacked 3 of them, putting Clay's personal cubby on top. And then stacked two more beside those, with the upright one on top.

This spot in the corner is now desk-ready! We are probably going to build one that mounts to the wall and can be folded down out of the way when not in use. Our idea is that if it is a constant fixture, it is more likely to get loaded up with stuff that has a home somewhere else!

Now when you look in the door, you see this view:

The best part is, they have kept it like this for two weeks straight! It is a miracle. Their room has never been clean this long. It seems to be much easier for them to play and then put things away. now they did have to come in a clean up a few things so I could get this clean picture, but for the most part they have kept it up with no yelling or being told to. Did you catch that part? NO YELLING!!!!!