Bulletin Board

Day 152: Bulletin Board

Here's a bulletin for you: if you're going to allow your younger child to move into your older child's room, wait until your older child has been gone from home at least two weeks. Especially if your older child loves stuff. Especially if physical chaos makes you anxious, causing you not to be able to relax until everything is orderly and in place. Don't allow your younger child to begin the process of moving stuff from one room to another until the first room is cleaned out. Don't begin painting on a Sunday afternoon in the middle of soccer try-outs and busy times at work and the blues everyone is feeling because your older child has left a hole in the household.

Here's another smart idea: if you constructed your younger child's 200-pound pressboard IKEA bed inside his tiny bedroom, don't assume you can get it through your circa 1927 doorframe without significant disassembly. And don't assume the disassembly will be easy to figure out, or that the little socket wrench that came with the IKEA bed is a standard size. Don't assume you will be able to put the components of the bed back together once you have taken it apart.

If, however, you have gone down the path of any of these poor decisions, don't be afraid to retrench. Finish the paint job, but don't worry too much about the spots where the black and purple previous colors are peeking through. Move all the clothes and decorations from room A to room B and vice versa. Then move everything you can't figure out what to do with into half-painted room B and shut the door.