Tidy Home Tuesday - Mission Bedroom

Bedrooms are funny. Magazines and blogs alike tell you all about how your bedroom is your sanctuary, your little slice of heaven. 'Look around your bedroom', the Flylady says, 'and ask yourself if there is anything laying around that you would consider trash if it was in a hotel room Your bedroom should be your very favourite retreat! 

I don't so much disagree with  that statement (after all, wouldn't that be nice?!), as feel the need to apply a reality check, because the reality is much more complex that that. 

Dear Flylady, I am prepared to give it a go and I admit that decluttering is a good idea, but there is plenty in this room that would look out of place in a hotel room.

Just saying...

Yes, the bedroom is the room you retreat to. It's private, and it's the place that sees the most tranquility of perhaps all the rooms in a home. 

But it also is the room that is not usually seen by guests, which means that it easily becomes a room that needs to be good for all sorts of stuff that a family accumulates and that doesn't look too decorative in the living room! 

And even more important, if you have children, the function of a bedroom extends. It's not just a private sanctuary for you, or for you and your partner, it's also a family room, shared by all. It's the first room your children enter in the morning, when they run in to wake you up and claim their morning snuggle. It's the room they sneak into in the dead of night if they had a nightmare or are feeling unwell. It sees children growing up from tiny infants to toddlers, to pre-schoolers, to school children, and it needs to expand in function to accommodate all their needs. Furniture gets added (cots, changing stations, nappy bins...), and gets removed again as needs change, toys and books get dragged in for early morning or evening play and reading sessions, ill children snuggle under the covers and watch Netflix on the laptop, morning coffees and hot chocolates get carried in, get drunk in bed, get spilt in the bed. Walls see their fair share of abuse (boy #3 may just have 'tried' his colouring pens on the wall behind our bed a few weeks ago... grrrr!). Pillows go flying in pillow fights. Covers get pulled off so they can be used in the construction of dens, laundry gets sorted... This room is meaningful to the family in so many ways that extend that boutique hotel notion of 'sanctuary'.

It is a sanctuary, but the word may just have to stretch its meaning a little bit to make room for everybody...

(Flylady magic - 15 minutes in the weekly 'zone' really does get a lot done...)