Making My Room Special

by Emilie Barnes, Anne Christian Buchanan

Suggests various ways of redoing a room and keeping it organized, including decorating hints, crafts, cleanup tips, storage ideas, and room-sharing solutions

32 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 1999

About the author

Emilie Barnes was the bestselling author of more than 80 books, including 101 Ways to Clean Out the Clutter, Five Minutes in the Bible for Women, and 15 Minutes Alone with God. Sales of her books have surpassed 6 million copies worldwide. She and her husband, Bob, founded the More Hours in My Day time-management seminars.

Emilie’s heart was always to help others in practical ways as they managed their busy homes and lives, but even more, her beautiful spirit made a connection with readers that was both lovely and timeless. Her words remain as inspiring today as when they were first published.

Reviews

[Panda Incognito · Rating 4 out of 5]

I recently had a video call with a family friend to help her go through her children's book collection, which she was purging and reorganizing. This was great fun, and I enjoyed seeing old favorite titles, books that our families had given to each other, and titles that I remembered related to her children's interests and activities. This book was one of the fun memory-making ones, especially since my family friend's daughters came over one weekend to help me and my sister clean and reorganize our rooms. I bought a copy of this book used online for nostalgia and future reference, since it's no longer in print.

This book is full of practical ideas for cleaning your room, organizing your stuff, and decorating with DIY projects. The fictional framing device involves a group of friends who team up together to redo each other's rooms, and because each girl has a different primary problem, each story addresses a specific difficulty, such as having a hard time keeping your room straight, sharing a room with a sister, or not knowing where things are. After each fictionalized part, the author includes detailed checklists, ideas, and project guides.

I originally read this book after my childhood friend recommended it, and I have great memories of the day that my sister and our friends worked on our rooms. I still use the boxes that we covered and decorated in wrapping paper based on this book's recommendation and instructions, and I appreciate how the projects all encourage creativity and resourcefulness. Some of them would require a trip to the craft store, but overall, the DIY projects are easy and affordable for kids, and I like that the book emphasizes using things at hand.

I would recommend this book to girls and families who are looking for helpful, realistic books about room-cleaning, organization, and decor. It's fairly obscure now, but it's worth the money to buy it used, and even though the book has a very feminine color palette, the content and most of the project ideas are applicable to girls of any style or interest.

[Jasmine Shadows · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a short book for young girls. It has delightful illustrations to draw them in and wonderful suggestions for make their rooms their own.