The Boy They Kept In the Closet

I started to label this post “Coming Out of the Closet”, but didn’t need *those* kinds of internet rumors floating around about my son, that’s for sure! So I re-titled the post, although after reading the title again, we’ll probably have Children’s Services calling us any day. Mainly, I just wanted to share with you some photos of Kellen’s room, aka The Old Storage Closet.

No lie, this is the room the previous owners used for storage. Rubbermaid bins, paint cans, holiday decorations, etc. We looked around at the camping equipment, mattresses, ice chests and cardboard boxes, and thought, “Hey, we could put a kid in here!” And so we did. I mean, when you buy a house that only has two bedrooms, and there are five people in your family, a little creativity is in order. Even if the bedrooms are the size of Alaska.

We left the storage shelves attached to the walls and Kellen uses those as his “closet”. There’s plenty of room for his bed, bookshelf, stuffed animals, toys, and lots and lots of space in the middle for him to play. If he WOULD play upstairs, that is, which he won’t anymore, because apparently the kids were channel surfing the other day and ran across the movie “Chucky, or whatever the hell that movie is with that demonic little doll, and now none of them will go upstairs. Ever. For anything. Something tells me I’ll be learning to program the remote and block certain channels and certain shows in the near future, unless I enjoy sleeping with all three kids in my room (which I do not, just for the record) or enjoy making thirty-seven trips a day up the stairs with the kids because they are too frightened to go by themselves (repeat …. Do not enjoy.)


So anyway, here are some photos of Kellen’s closet bedroom.






What I find interesting is that door at the other end of Kellen’s room? That’s a door to another storage closet. One that separates the closet-closet from the storage space in the attic. Just how many dead bodies did they think we were planning to keep up here, anyway?

And before you feel too sorry for Kellen, having to stay in a closet, for goodness’ sake, let me point out that his “closet”, while not only bigger than my first apartment, is also directly connected to the upstairs living area/game room.






So he has immediate access to the sofas, television, dvd, vcr, Wii, karaoke machine, games, books, and treadmill. And we have an air hockey table, but can’t fit it up the damn stairs. I mean, all he needs is a mini fridge and it would be nicer than my freshman dorm room at college!

In all seriousness, we do plan on having some remodeling work done. We want to close up the wall between his room and the game room and put a door or double door between them, so he can have his privacy as he gets older. We want to close in the shelving units and make a “real” closet for him to use, replace the carpet, and {thinking big} we’d love to add in a 3/4 bathroom for his personal use. As it is now, he has to walk through the game room, across the hall, and through the girls’ bedroom to use the bathroom there. Once the girl’s rooms are separated (why yes, that is my face, with flashing dollar signs for eyeballs, considering all the work we want to do) it will be harder for him to use their restroom, and it seems a little cruel to tell him he has to hold it until he can get downstairs in the middle of the night.

But, until we win the lottery, he’ll be trudging across the upstairs to potty. And sleeping in a closet.