my soft spot

just a mom who plays hockey and knits

Sunday, April 25, 2010

Kid makes another step toward organization

My sister spotted this bookcase on sale at Target, and recognized that it compared favorably to the Expedit system at IKEA, especially at the sale price. With 7 cloth baskets, it all came to $90 with tax (even including the green monkey-faced one, which G discovered has an opening that closes with magnets. He's decided it will house fun things--things that you "monkey around" with).

We got it late Saturday, after a very successful Give Hockey A Try Day (lots of participants left saying they were going to sign up! Yeah!) and a trip to Mountain Mike's for pizza and socializing, another new thing this GHATD. Target closed at 11 and we arrived shortly after 10:30PM. Fortunately, I'd brought the ad and an employee was able to direct lead me right to it.

I left it in my car that night, as I'm still nursing a back injury (sooo close to being fine, but don't want to chance it), but had to take it out today to drive a friend's kids to a church event. I offered to G, earlier this evening, to either watch a movie together OR to put the organizer together. To my surprise, not only did he want to put it together (my kid, turn down a movie? Wow), but he insisted on doing the lion's share of the work. I only ended up directing the flow of the work (by reading the directions) and showing him how to use the wooden dowels so common in today's furniture. He did 99% of the screw-driving (I merely seated a few recalcitrant ones), and 99.5% of the hammering (the bookcase has black cardboard backing for 5 of the 9 openings, as is so common these days; and each one took 12 nails). I am so proud of him, doing all the work!

I got him started getting his things organized and in the bins--on which I put temporary labels for him to write on; we'll make more permanent-style labels when things settle into clear categories. He was working so hard that I looked up at the time after a while and whisked him away to a trip to the ice-cream store. So proud of my kid.