If You Take Away a Mom's Office

If You Take Away a Mom's Office

If you take away a mom's office and give it to her son for a bedroom, she will need a place for all her stuff.
She will look around and realize the only place to put her bookcase and all the bills is her bedroom.
When her husband and son move all her stuff into the master bedroom, she will look at it with growing dismay and realize looking at bills before bedtime wrecks the sanctuary feel of her room.  She will decide she must reclaim the kitchen desk that was surrendered to the children as a spot for crafts and computing.  Alas, if she reclaims the kitchen desk, she will have to relocate all the kid crafting and project parts.

Her eyes will fall on the pantry and she will decide the children may use the bottom of the pantry for their paints, glues, pipe cleaners, mod podge, and colors.  The pantry will require reorganizing to make room.  To make room, the Mom will need to take cooking vessels and party trays from the pantry and put them in the kitchen.  To put them in the kitchen, she will have to make room, which means reorganizing the kitchen cupboards.

The Mom will throw out cracked sippies and unloved storage tops to spruce up her kitchen and pantry. She might even make ice cream in the much-wanted, and then forgotten, ice cream maker.  When she finally gets the kitchen reassembled and the pantry just-so, she will start the process of placing the kid craft cabinet contents into the bottom of the pantry.  Doing so will make her remember why she gave the kids the craft cabinet in the first place: Visibility.  From multiple vantage points, the Mom can see Little One grab the finger paints before church or Middle One snag wiggle eyes for his backpack and Big Kid attempt to walk off with the roll of butcher paper.

She will realize sacrificing the kitchen desk to the children actually helps maintain her sanity and some sense of cleanliness in her home. She will promptly move the kid paraphernalia back into the kitchen desk, and revel in her pristine pantry. She will decide maybe the bills can stay in her room because to bring them out in the kitchen would create more chaos that saving her bedtime sanctuary is worth.  Maybe she will use some fabric from the craft cabinet to fashion a curtain to cover bookcase shelf holding the files and bills.  The mom will sigh and wistfully think she really needs an office.

~ G