Ad| Redesigning A Bedroom As Your Child Grows Up

When I started this blog my children were young. Well, kind of. They were at least all children, and the little 2 weren't even at school yet. More than 8 years has passed, and my youngest is now 11 and starting high school in a few months. They all grew up. 

With 7 children in total, and 5 years of people to and fro at work, uni and college, we've had a lot of bedroom swaps over the years. Now that we only have the youngest two children at home full time we're a lot more settled, and really I want to create bedrooms for them that are relaxing and calm, but have plenty of their own more mature and still very unique personalities. 

As most of us can't afford a whole makeover and new furniture, here are some of my tips to help the bedroom grow up, without breaking the bank... 

Clear out the 'baby toys'.

We've really neglected rotating out, passing forward or throwing out toys that are simply too young for my boys now. They're happy to play with small worlds occasionally, but not really in public, and certainly not to the extent they used to. It's a hard thing to do after 27 years of having young children in the house, but without moving out most of the things they rarely touch, there's no room for the things they do want to have access to. Once they rediscover their more 'grown up' games, chemistry sets, electronics and crafts, it'll be like Christmas... 

Browse the bookshelf.

We love books. We love, love, love books, and we have thousands. I've given away many of our books for very young children, donated them to people with babies and our local school, but we have a lot of books for younger readers left. And I think it's long past time to say a sad goodbye to our beautiful Mamas & Papas Bookshelf. It worked so well for picture books... 

Sort out the knick knacks.

My youngest child is a world class 'knick knack' collector. He drives me insane with his collections of small plastic, rubbery or cardboard toys. He gets them out and plays with them regularly - and then throws them all on top of his chest of drawers. He says it's a display. Well, at this age children do want to display things, but he's definitely going to have to consider a different way to display and some better storage options, because this is just a dust collector...

Decide which bits you don't like.

One of my children has a sink in his bedroom. It's unattractive and hidden in an awkward corner behind a sofa-bed, but now that he's almost a teenager he'll want to use it. This calls for a new furniture layout, and some tricks to make the sink look less like a very cheap 1950's B&B. Some LED lighting should help. The sink also has a really ugly white tile splashback, which isn't attractive for any bedroom, so some tile stickers can make a massive improvement to that. 

Move the furniture.

When my bigger kids started leaving home and two youngest boys moved into bedrooms by themselves, there was understandable excitement around the move, and it was rushed. I've never been happy with the layout in either of their rooms, it doesn't make best use of space. Now that they're bigger, they don't need huge floorspace for jigsaws or cars, but they do need a place to do homework and use a laptop. 

That time we took part in the Guinness DC Comics Superhero Dress Up World Record 

Sort out the wall decor.

Not repainting or papering, I'm talking about the much quicker and easier types of wall decor. While they were little, my boys had wall stickers and posters with LEGO Ninjago, Fortnite, DC Superheroes and Marvel's Avengers. They still want a bit of that, but they need something more grown up, some more original wall stickers and posters to match their taste now. Often science, space and the planets in our case... 

Soft furnishings.

No self respecting pre-teen wants to invite their mates over if they've got a Thomas The Tank Engine duvet cover or alphabet curtains. There are some amazing bedding sets out there - including duvet covers made from recycled plastic bottles - and even if they're printed, they definitely aren't all babyish.

Let them lead.

Finally, whenever you do anything to a child's bedroom, it's really wise to let them take the lead. They can choose the colour, the style, the theme. If they have a say in it, then they can take pride in it, and (in theory) they'll be much keener to keep it tidy, and have everything in it's place. Fingers crossed...