A Kid’s room may look like a forest but I don’t think that counts as a consciously chosen eco-friendly design. When our son wanted a more grownup room, we made the decision to incorporate environmental consciousness in the renovation. So I went to our doable compromise strategy: start with two changes that bring you one step closer to green.

• Doable compromise #1: Reuse whatever we can from the old space and repurpose it for the new space. Instead replacing everything with new, we chose two pieces of wood furniture from his room that could be repainted to fit our new design. One of them was an old nightstand that we turned into a bookshelf.

• Doable compromise #2: Replace the main light fixture with a greener substitute. We found a cool recycled glass light fixture and chose an energy-saving CFL bulb.

To further reinforce the two-fold goal of transforming space and helping reform the planet, we thoughtfully gave our son a real hands-on role in the renovation. We gave him two responsibilities that saved us time and helped him build life skills:

1. Internet research to develop an eco-informed game plan. What are some of the pitfall areas when redecorating? For instance, are there a lot of environmentally bad options in paints? If so, what paints on the market are processed with the least amount of chemicals? One idea he came up with based on his research was to purchase organic cotton bed linens.
    
2. Setting up a budget for the room redo on our financial software. This task included entering receipts, making changes when overages occurred, and being part of decisions on how to compensate for additional expenses without blowing the budget entirely. Being up close and personal with the process of estimating a budget and trying to maintain a budget in the real world was a separate lesson in itself: transformation doesn’t always come easy but it’s often worth it.