My Journey of Hope: The Room of DOOM - Before and After

That's right, you heard me.

Doom.

DOOM!

Tertius and Quarta's room has been the bane of my existence since they could pull thing off of the shelves (which coincidentally, preceded walking by a few months). It's messy, it's overcrowded. and it's not being used to its fullest potential in any way, shape, or form. It was less-than-helpful that our cat, Saffron, viewed Quarta as her main competition, and decided to exert her dominance by urinating on Quarta's clothes and belongings, stinking up the joint like nobody's business!

Hubby and I have been systematically chipping away at the mess; reminders throughout the day to "pick up 20 things" are met alternately with excitement, or with eye rolls and groans, but they've been making headway. Very, very slow headway. And as often as not, for all the progress they made, they'd reward themselves by pulling out half again as many toys to play with. So, I was just sick of it; the mess, the smell, the constant roller coaster ride of cleanliness,  and I needed to step in. The end result is that I spent the better part of 5 or 6 hours in there over the last two days, trying to not only tame the overwhelming mess, but also to find the source of the cat urine problem.

This was taken about two hours into cleaning, so it already looks miles better than before

This is what I found when I pulled out the rolling cart that Tertius stores some of his toys in

Quarta's dresser is to the left, with her rolling cart toy storage; the dresser in the center has extra sheets, and costumes stashed away.

In the process of cleaning, I located three sources of the urine stench - in front of Tertius' dresser, under the bunk beds, and in the closet. The room reeked, and I don't know how they could stand the smell. And there I was, without baking soda to neutralize the odour! That red bag you see in the photo above? That's most of the garbage I pulled out of their room. Not just garbage, but anything that had been peed on and was not salvageable.  I soaked an untold number of Lego pieces and Hot Wheels cars to get rid of the stench overnight. Given the number of Pokemon cards I had to toss, I think the kids both learned a valuable lesson.

I had each child help me individually, which I feel worked very well, and together, we got everything off the floor, and even from under the bed. We left it last night like this:

Hey, there's a carpet under there!

you can't see the cat urine, but it's there... but at least the mess isn't!

SOO much better!

The next step is finishing up the closet, then taking the Bissel Little Green Machine to the carpet and try to get rid of the smell.

I'll keep you posted!