The Room of Requirement

It was a bittersweet kind of day. I finally cleaned out the room of requirement. Before it was the room of requirement (aka "junk room") it was the toy room. Before that it was the homeschool room. And long before that, it was the future bedroom for for another child or two down the road before I found out that just wasn't going to be a possibility.

The room of requirement held everything that didn't seem to have another place to live. Everything from the CD bookcase to the vacuum resided in there. Plus, all of the Legos, K'Nex, costumes, DVDs, extra electronic equipment and a a boat load of art supplies. No really, think over-the-ocean freighter ship, kind of boat load. Essentially, it is the room everything went to when we had a quick company-is-coming clean. Over the years, the room turned into a hoarder's best dream.

When we were looking to move to Florida, I knew I would have to tackle that room and I wasn't looking forward to it. After all, we couldn't exactly tell a potential buyer, "Look! The chin-up bar and the 16 white boards come with the home with a full price offer." (Or could we??) As it turned out, it was a huge relief when Marty turned down the job, just so I didn't have to deal with cleaning out this room.

Today, I mustered up the courage, grabbed a few boxes and Polly and I cleaned out the room. Ollie's dog bed was donated. The broken music stand was thrown away. The Nerf darts were collected and given back to Buckaroo, who still has Nerf wars with various friends. And all the art supplies were placed on the kitchen table, all the chairs, floor and counters while Polly and I argued lively discussed how many sketch pads does she really need.

"I need as many sketch pads as you need jigsaw puzzles," was her answer. Touche'.

Incidentally, I donated a few jig saw puzzles.

We kept the Legos and K'Nex. They are now neatly placed in the closet, waiting for my nephew and a few of the other kids who sometimes come over.

A good portion of the art supplies, construction paper, markers, crayons, paint brushes, paint, colored pencils, glue sticks, fabric paint, more construction paper, party decorations, beads, costumes and more (much, much more) were put into a giant box and brought across the street to the new neighbors who have four children under the age of six. It made me smile to think these kiddos could get some leverage out of these things that gave my children so much joy.