In the house that I grew up in, we were fortunate enough to have a huge toy room! It really was very large. It was off the master bedroom and I think it was intended to be a master suite/sitting area/home office kind of space. For our family, we made it a toy room. It housed our computer, a card/game/puzzle table, TV with a Nintendo, but it also had a big plywood table that my brother and sister used to build villages out of Legos. It was a very well used room!
We don’t have that luxury in our current house. There isn’t a room dedicated for toys. But we need SOMETHING for toys because we have a lot of them. We’ve always had plenty of hand-me-down toys just waiting for someone to play with them, but our families were very generous with gifts this Christmas!
I’d like a dedicated place for playing. Or, at the minimum, a dedicated place for where toys start out! My options:
Option #1: Phinehas’s room.
This would probably work for now, but long-term, I don’t like this option. I like the idea of associating bedrooms with sleep, not playing. And when he gets old enough to sleep in a big boy bed instead of a crib, I don’t want toys staring at him just begging to be played with.
Option #2: The finished basement.
We have a ranch with a full basement that’s about 3/4 finished. A perfect place to have a playroom! Except…kids want to play near their parents and I can’t see sending kiddo to the basement to play while I stay upstairs. And I can’t see me spending much time down in the basement. The rest of the living areas are upstairs, which is where we’re more likely to want to be. We also keep our TV downstairs and I don’t want to make it easy to just mindlessly turn the TV on.
Option #3: The guest bedroom/office.
We have a 3-bedroom home: a master bedroom, Phinehas’s room and a guest bedroom/office. I could turn the guest bedroom/office into a play room, but well…I’m kind of hoping to turn it into a baby room for baby #2 should the Lord bless us with more kids (none on their way yet, unfortunately). I could put Phinehas and Not-Yet-Conceived-Baby in the same room, but the current plan isn’t to stack kids up until there are more of them than there are bedrooms. It’d be a good temporary option though.
Option #4: The living room.
It’s the hub of our home during the day. It’s right by the kitchen. It’s down the hall from the bedrooms. It’s where Phinehas and I spend our day. And to be honest, it’s where we’re most likely to play anyway. I think if toys started out somewhere else, they’d just end up here. So I probably just need to admit that the toy storage needs to go here.
So…I think Option #4 wins….now I just gotta think of a way to store toys that isn’t totally repulsive to me!
What would you do in this situation?
I agree with your living room decision – seems like it makes the most sense.
When we were kids we had a big (or at least, in my recollection it was big) toy box by the couch, and when the room needed to be cleaned up, all the toys got dumped in there.
I agree with the box in the living room. I bought some nice containers at Target and put them in the living room, kitchen, and the girls’ bedroom. When it’s time to clean up, all the toys get thrown into the bin of whatever room they are in. Very quick and easy. One more thing: we keep the large toys in a basement playroom. You might be surprised down the road at how happy your kids are to play by themselves in the basement (and how happy you are to have them playing down there!).