A great book to help motivate and inspire tweens to clean out and redecorate their bedrooms.
How do you get rid of all the clutter? What color scheme should you choose? How does lighting play into creating the perfect bedroom? All of these questions are answered in It’s Your Room: A Decorating Guide for Real Kids by Janice Weaver and Frieda Wishinsky (Tundra Books, 2006, ISBN 0-88776-711-1).
Before your tween decides to take on the seemingly daunting task of redoing her (or his) bedroom, there are three things that need to happen: a mass cleanup, a look at the budget, and deciding on a certain style.
Cleanup tends to be the hardest task in any redecoration project. It’s Your Room shows your tween how to decide what to keep, what to put away into storage, what to give away, and what to toss out. Fantastic tips are offered up, such as setting up a schedule of cleanup and self-reward. Tasks should be taken in simple steps so that the tween (or even the adult) is not overwhelmed.
After clearing through the heaps of junk, the next step is to choose a color scheme for the bedroom. For some, this is easy. However, for those of us who can never decide, read It’s Your Room to learn more about warm and cool colors, color meanings, and how colors affect our mood.
After the bedroom is painted, your tween must look at how the furniture will be placed in the room. This is an important step because you want a room that looks great and takes advantage of extra space. Graph paper is suggested for this step and directions are given as to how to begin figuring out where to put what.
Pets are also a consideration. Where’s the best place to put the hamster cage? What can be done about cat and dog hair? The solutions offered up are simple common sense advice.
One of the most interesting chapters in this book is on lighting. People seldom consider lighting when redecorating a room. Tweens will learn about the three different types of lighting and how to use them most effectively in their space.
The room’s been painted and the furniture is back in place. The lighting meets all your tweens needs. Now it’s time for your tween to decorate her space. She will learn how to hang up pictures for the best effect and get great tips on what type of curtains to use.
If your tween has the craving for something new and different, It’s Your Room is sure to inspire her to clean up and get creative with her personal living space.
