"People, when they perform a behavior a lot — especially in the same environment, same sort of physical setting — outsource the control of the behavior to the environment".
- David Neal
We listened to a
very timely piece on NPR's Morning Edition yesterday morning, about how the best way to follow through on an intention (or resolution) is to change your environment. Case in point - if you are trying to lose weight, and you have a nightly ritual of sitting on the same spot on the couch, with three scoops of ice cream in your favorite bowl, watching your favorite late night show, you won't have success in eating better if you don't break up that
entire scenario. Move the couch. Ditch the bowl. Purchase a different type of dessert - low calorie, preferably. Watch the show on the DVR at a different time of day. You get into a rut, and your brain becomes trained to do it the same way, over and over again - it goes on autopilot. Those are the most difficult of all habits to break.
This story was amusing to hear after we had just spent the past week moving practically
everything around in our house. We have been wanting to make better use of our space for quite some time. We live in a two-story house with an unfinished basement. Each level is 'about' 900 sq.ft. Since we spend about 80% of our time inside the house on the main floor, we have been six people crammed into 900 sq. ft. That can make for some cranky kids and even crankier parents. The main floor consists of the kitchen, living room, office, dining room, entryway, 1/2 bath and a coat closet. The kitchen is a very nice size - it is my favorite room in the house. The living room has an odd shape with little wall space. For the past 18 months it has also had all of the office furniture in it too. It was where we did the bulk of our school work. We would rotate the desk to make a "U' shape during the week, and then push it back against the wall during the weekends to make more floor space. We only had room for one couch and one recliner in there, so there were constant fights for places to sit to watch TV. The front room is what I suppose would be where most people would traditionally put the office. We used to have our office in there, but it was too tight of a fit. Once we inherited my grandmother's piano, that was the place it needed to go, so we moved our office out and the piano in. The fish tank and a recliner and the small love seat couch were crammed in there as well. The dining room has served as the playroom for a number of years. Four kids had very little floorspace to use. It was crammed full with shelving, bins and whatnot, but there was still no room to spread out train tracks or dump Legos or dress Barbies. The toys would spread to all areas of the main floor. I was tripping over toys constantly... kicking them out of the way as I tried to get from the stove to the refrigerator, sweeping aside a pile just to open the front door.... I was sick, sick, sick of toys. Every time ANYBODY would come over I was embarrassed about the mess. I would lie awake at night and worry that we would have a housefire and some poor firefighter would not be able to rescue us because he couldn't escape the playroom. I confess I have broken quite a few when I would get into cleaning fit and throw them full force towards the playroom area. Not a good situation.
So when Dean mentioned that we should use the week (his vacation last week) to clear out the basement and move the playroom down there, I was all for it. We took down all of the Christmas stuff so that it would be out of the way. We spent an entire day clearing out 2/3 of the large basement area room (about half of the basement, so.... 400 sq feet??) and moved every single last toy to the basement.
It. was. glorious.
Here are the before and afters...
 |
| Playroom before |
 |
| Playroom before |
 |
| Basement before |
 |
| Basement before |
 |
| We cleared out some junk and built a wall (November) |
And now... ta-da!!
(cue the choir of angels....)
 |
| We haven't put up wallboard on the wall that Dean built yet, but fabric panels work just as well. I had these left over from my classroom. So glad I finally found a use for all that fabric. Need some more staples though... |
 |
| We bolted the TV to the wall because that sucker weighs a ton. Owen got that car mat on the floor for Christmas - I'm glad that it can be left out and be used at all times. The cat has been on the prowl for all things creepy-crawly. Good cat! |
 |
| The bigger furniture items that we want to keep but have nowhere to put (for now) were shoved into the back corner. My china hutch is back there (again, no where to put) and all of our file boxes that we have yet to sort. Dean put up safety fencing to keep little buggers out. |
 |
| It's nice that there is room all around the train table for kids to move, and Jordan has his own table for building Legos. |
 |
Rylan's dollhouse had been residing in our bedroom since her birthday last May. Now I don't have to step around it every morning when I roll out of bed. Hallelujah! She even has room to park her new motor home. Jordan added a monster in the attic as a special touch.
|
With that done, we had an empty room in the house (the former playroom) to FILL with stuff. So we did. We filled it with our office furniture. Funny story - and I can't remember if I mentioned it before, so forgive me if I am repeating myself. But when Dean and I met, we thought it was hilarious that we both had the same office furniture. He had a file cabinet, the computer cabinet and another cabinet that a desk attached to. I had a file cabinet and the stand-alone desk. We bought the four hutch shelving units just a couple of years ago to handle the ever-increasing about of school stuff. So here is our *new* school room...
 |
| I'm not finished reloading the bookshelves quite yet. I have some sorting I would like to do first. |
 |
| This one is all about the cat. |
 |
| Just bought a nice wall calendar...Year-at-a-Glance. I have to squint to read the dates when I am sitting at the computer - but it is so handy when I am working out school/scout/vacation schedules. |
 |
| I can FINALLY put up my dry-erase board - complete w/ All About Spelling tiles. This little guy has been living under the couch for the past year, to keep Colin from jamming the tiles into the paper shredder. |
 |
| Our hallway. A five-way junction of absolute chaos. Office? Garage? Kitchen? Bathroom? Tiny useless coat closet? Take your pick. We had an 8-cube shelving unit in here (it was under the key rack) that held all of our shoes/mail/purses, and then two more bin units with 3 drawers each that held all mittens/hats/scarves/snow boots, ect... Then, behind that were two coat racks - one high and one low...FULLY loaded. You could not get through this hallway to save your life - and bringing in groceries was an absolute nightmare. And if you REALLY had to go to the bathroom - forget it! We removed the lower coat rack and all of the bin units. Just look at all of this S - P - A - C - E. I can breathe!!! |
 |
We moved the 8 - cube shelving unit here - and put it longways instead. Each kiddo has a shoe bin, and then a place above it to put their mittens/hats/scarves... We moved the lower coat rack to here, and then weeded out the coat selection to just a lightweight jacket, a fleece and a heavy winter coat.
|
And now... for the living room. We moved the office out, and the little couch in. Now everybody has a place to sit. But most importantly... S - P - A - C - E . And you can play the Wii without bashing your little brother on the head.
 |
| Before... (NYE 2010) |
 |
| After. Now even the lazy dog can stretch out! |
I just can't get over how nice it is to not be tripping over toys. That I can vacuum at my leisure, without moving cars, trucks, Barbies or plastic fruits and vegetables out of my way. I can walk to the bathroom, unimpeded. We can focus on schoolwork without the distraction of the toys or kids overflowing from the playroom. We can work on the computer w/o the distraction of the TV. The coats and shoes don't get all jumbled up with the toys - along with gross and disgusting curdled-milk filled sippy cups.
I will confess that there is one thing I will miss. We took the two trikes to the basement. I miss the kids making hot laps around the house. I may move them back up here because it was fun to watch them race around. Although not so fun to take a hit in the ankle when you are trying to dump super-hot pasta into the colander at the sink.
The environment has changed, so we intend for habits to as well. Putting things away. Focusing on schoolwork. More space should equal less squabbling. The best thing is that this whole transformation cost less than $50. We had to purchase a space heater for the playroom because it is super-cold down there. That is not without a ton of anxiety on my part, but it was absolutely necessary. It has a lot of safety features on it, and we are being very vigilant about turning it off when playtime is done. I also move the baby monitor to the basement during the daytime, so that I can keep tabs on who is doing what.... to whom. :)
