ISO a room of my own

When I first had children we lived in a tiny house. It was so small that my son's bedroom couldn't fit a twin sized bed. There was no dining room, only a breakfast nook created when we bumped out the wall in the kitchen. There was no space and so I accepted that it was inevitable that my children's things were all over the house. I couldn't walk from my bedroom, where the floor was littered with stuffed animals and trucks, to the kitchen without winding through an obstacle course of toys and sippy cups. I often thought wistfully of the time when one day I would have a home larger than the one room school house we currently inhabited. I wistfully fantasized about enough bathrooms for everyone, dedicated space for toys and art supplies and maybe even a spare room that would be an office, and not an office/playroom/exercise room/family room/wine cellar.

Fast forward and we currently live in a house that is roughly three times the size of the old one. We have several bathrooms and even a bedroom devoted to being solely a guest room. There is plenty of storage for the toys and I even have an office. And yet, I still have no space of my own. Despite the increase in size I still find my children and all their things in every room of the house.

You may be thinking that my house must be extremely messy, and at times it is. But just today we had cleaning people come, which means I spent over an hour picking up the entire house and putting everything back where it belongs. Everything. Legos back in the bin. Children's books off of my nightstand and into their bookcases. Art pens and paper into the drawer. Hair accessories and 8 year old girl jewelry out of the guest bathroom and back into her room. Light sabers out of the dining room and living room. The cleaning people left at 1:30pm.

It is now 3:30pm and I have already noticed a pair of pink crocs in the guest room, and a trail of legos across my bedroom floor. I also found a lego Star Wars mini-figure in my closet and a stuffed animal on my bed. My bathroom inexplicably has a light saber on the floor and my office has a few Star Wars fighter jets, as though it has been reappropriated and is now the planet Endor. The kitchen looks like something exploded - and my children don't even cook. The family room has been returned to its usual state of being covered in legos. I found a ball in the dining room and someone's iPod in the living room. Interestingly enough, both of their rooms remain as they were when the cleaning people left.

So what I am looking for is a room for me. A place I can call my own that I can pick up and it will stay that way. Okay, let's face it, it would never get messy to begin with. My room will contain only my things. I am contemplating how hard it would be to get a contractor to build a secret room somewhere, perhaps in the crawl space? Up in the attic? Wherever it is, it will also be soundproof. Without a lego in sight.