The Teen got a wild hair a few months ago and decided that he wanted to put our old loveseat in his room.  He's an only child, so he's pretty possessive of his space, and didn't like having friends sit on his bed when they came over.

I informed him that he would be unable to fit his queen bed, dresser, nightstand, and the loveseat in his bedroom.  I suggested he switch back from the queen bed to a twin bed, be he insists that the twin bed is "too small" for him.  He thinks he's too tall for it.  Whatever.  He's only about 5'7".

Rather than giving anything up, he simply switched to a bigger room.  We have three bedrooms upstairs and only one child, so he pretty much has his pick of rooms.  He ended up taking over what used to be our office/den, because it's a longer room, which left plenty of space for his queen bed and the loveseat.  

The Mr. dubbed the old bedroom "The Conservatory" because he had visions of The Teen practicing his trombone in there.  We didn't need an office any longer, so all the stuff from the former office got moved into The Conservatory, and we were going to go back and sort through everything another time.  In addition to all the old office contents, the room also ended up housing all the stuff The Teen didn't feel like moving to his new room.  "The Conservatory" should have been dubbed "The Hot Mess."

And it only got worse.  Because it was already unorganized and nobody really went in there, it ended up being the dumping ground for anything that we didn't feel like dealing with or putting away.  Here's what it ended up looking like.



Some of the things that got dumped in The Conservatory were our bins of electronic parts.  You see, The Mr. is a technology guy, so he keeps stashes of CAT-5 cables, telephone wires, keyboards, mice, and all kinds of parts and pieces that only he knows what to do with.  Those things are usually in bins in our hall closet upstairs, but The Mr. had pulled them out for a re-wiring project, or two, or several, and they never got put back away in the closet, or even back in the bins.

Being the slightly OCD person that I am, I decided to spread all the technology bits and pieces out on the floor, sort it into piles, then use twist-ties to keep each separate cable organized.  Then I had The Mr. decide what was needed and what we could get rid of, and then the rest got organized into bins.

Here's a sampling of my piles.  This is only a fraction of all the cords and cables we had!

Can you spot the kitty in the photo?  Any of you cat owners out there know that they have to be right in the middle of things.

I organized about half the stuff in the room several months ago, but since I tend to get bored of projects before I complete them, the rooms sat half-finished for months.

Meanwhile, The Teen had ditched the loveseat for a giant beanbag that my brother passed down to him.  I mean, it's GIANT.  It takes up more room than the loveseat did!  So we ended up with a loveseat on its side in the middle of the upstairs game room because The Teen had dragged it out of his room and left it there.

Fast forward to the Xmas holidays.  Remember how I told you we were hosting 29 members of The Mr.'s family for Xmas?  Something needed to be done with The Conservatory.  Tune in next time to find out what!

And please tell me I'm not the only one whose husband keeps a stash of this kind of stuff.  There have to be others of you who live with geeks.  And I know I'm not the only person with a junk room.  You know who you are.  Tell.  All.

Hollie