“People” say that you either cling to the ways of your childhood/family or you run completely in the opposite direction.  I like to think that I recognized the amazing and wonderful pieces of my childhood and my parents and take those with me everywhere.  Certain things, though, I will admit that I run from as fast as possible.  Want an example?

That is the guest room in my parents’ house. {sorry mom!} To give them credit, it is only that bad because my mom hasn’t really been able to do much cleaning for awhile now.  However, all the stuff and clutter, are from years worth of accumulation.
No, my mom is not a hoarder and you don’t need to call that tv show to have them perform an intervention…at least not yet!
You see, growing up without a lot of luxury will make you think twice before throwing anything away because it could offer some value down the road.  Add to that the fact that my mom has a lot more than one sentimental bone in her body and you have a recipe for what you see above.
Me…I had luxuries.  My parents always made sure I had everything I needed and a lot of things I didn’t need but wanted.  I’m also not that sentimental.  I keep some special things, sure, but not to the degree that my mom does.  Clutter is my worst enemy so, if it is going to clutter up my house, it is gone.
I’ve recently started staging an semi-intervention in their house.  It started with the kitchen while my mom was in the hospital.  I didn’t really mean to clean it, throw a bunch of stuff away and re-organize it.  I was just there, alone, and needed something {anything} to keep my mind off the pain and suffering that my mom {and dad as her caregiver} was experiencing at the time. I needed something that I could control and take charge off and the kitchen seemed like as good of thing as any.
That put me on a mission to put my parent’s house back in order so that it was functional and organized.  It seems trivial in the wake of everything that is going on but it is something that I can do in a situation where I {honestly} feel completely helpless.
This past visit the mission moved to the room you see above.  Want some more pictures of the target?

The room is about the size of a standard bedroom with a substantial closet.  It serves as their office and also as the place where my kids sleep when we visit. 
My first order of business was to reduce the amount of stuff there.  I forced my mom to make some hard choices about some of the items in there but we got rid of a fairly large amount items through donation to goodwill/the church, throwing things away and prepping things for my upcoming community yard sale.  The rest of the items got new or upgraded homes.
All of the kid books and toys went into new bookcases.  I picked them up at Target and then my mom used modge podge to put some cute scrapbook paper along the back.

We added the two rocking chairs into that space to make it like a little reading/play nook for the kids.

Next area of focus was the desk.  My dad put together a new desk and moved all the computer components over to it.

Lol…that desk looks so small with such a huge computer screen but that is actually being replaced (or already has been)by a laptop.

Then, we worked on cleaning out the closet.

My mom still has a little bit of work to do in there with those coats and hangers. We’ll be removing all the stuff and turning it into a reading nook/sleeping area for H.  The doors will come off and we’ll build in some shelving so it will look a lot like this

[The Inspired Room]

We ran out of time though so the closet transformation will be next trip!