Wow, your 'before' picture looks just like my bookcase headboard (flotsam included)! I tend to collect huge stacks of books and magazines that never migrate back to the bookshelf or trash when I'm done with them, vast quantities of medication and supplement bottles (half of them empty), water glasses or soda cans, nail files, cat toys, electronics chargers, candles...I recently did a big clean-up and de-clutter in our bedroom as well. Even rearranged the furniture so that Todd and I wouldn't be tripping over each other, our shoes, or the dirty laundry every morning, but it's already filling up again. Good job rehoming so much stuff-I'm impressed.

I still keep a flashlight in my headboard though. If there's an intruder in the house, I don't want to alert them to my presence by turning on the lights as I go to bash their head in. Or if the power's out due to a storm that's just put a tree through my living room ceiling, I don't want to be stumbling in the dark to the kitchen to find a flashlight to survey the damage and check on the pets. I've opted for one of the tiny but superbright LED flashlights. They are battery powered, but LEDs take so little power that the batteries last for a very long time.

I also keep a small fire extinguisher in the bedroom, near the bed, since our room is as far from the kitchen (where the main extinguisher lives) as it could be. Gotta be able to get to my pets and an exit if our crappy old wiring ever burst into flames.