AIBU- garden toys

Yanbu, grass can grow back or be replaced but it's way more important for your dc to enjoy their outside time.

Wait til you get to the football stage. That’ll cure him.

Well, it did DH anyway. And ds is now an academy player so it’s payed off. There will be many years ahead of us for beautifully manicured lawns. I want my dc to remember a garden they could play in. Some of our friends don’t let their dc out in the garden at all because ‘the lawn’, so instead they spend all their time indoors on screens.

Compromise!!! Find a permanent pitch for the Wendy house and pare down the amount of toys. If the child friendly part of the garden will be ready in a few months then your ‘visions’ of lots of tos will have to wait. The stuff about the stairs confuses me, surely your out their supervising and their is a gate to stop the youngest trying to re-enter the house via the stairs.

I agree that would be annoying but what's the size of the lawn and number of bushes got to do with it!

Can you leave the baby in the highchair or buggy if needed?

As the child of a dad who wouldn't let us play on his lawn I think he is an arse. I am still annoyed I could never have a swingball! My garden was all about kids toys until they grew out of them

This would drive me mad. If you have a large garden I'd make a section of it bark with a bit of a border to keep it neat and keep the kids toys on that.

I disagree that it would otherwise need expensive re-turfing thoug as a PP said. Your DH sounds like he would know how to reseed parts of a lawn when needed given he's so keen on gardening! If you can't do the bark YANBU to ask him to leave them on the grass.

Plenty of women have "child free rooms" or expect toys to be tidied completely out of view so as not to spoil the look of the front room etc.

This is the same for the garden

He’s being ridiculous. It doesn’t need to go on the patio at all.

If he moves the toys over a couple of feet twice a week, no grass will die and you won’t need to drag anything back on the lawn each morning.

A rocking horse and a toddler slide won’t damage lawn in under a week. A sandpit and Wendy House moving between four or five places will also protect a lawn from die back.

I agree with this, it makes sense. The grass won't be compromised if you move the toys around to a new pitch daily. We had a 10' x 8' trampoline I had to shift over when I wanted to mow the grass, now that was awkward. Doable, but awkward!

I also agree with a PP who suggested the foam mats that lock together to make a safe play surface, because your current patio risks splinters in your kids' feet. That's not acceptable, is it, so either you get the wooden surface smoothed out or you put mats down on it. I did this with our garden as it was mostly flagged and I wanted it to be more comfortable, and safer if DS fell over.

Unfortunately you do have to be a bit less precious over your garden when you have little children - I didn't do a thing to mine for two years after DS was born (except for putting mats down) - and it came through OK.

This would drive me mad.

The best solution would be to have the kids side and the neat side.

The kids having fun is more important than his garden.

I’m sure you’d rather not have toys all in the front room but they’re there because they’re for the kids.

When you have kids, you do have to compromise and realise your home and garden aren’t going to be as perfect as if you don’t have kids.

Ffs let your children enjoy the garden. What a miserable git. It's grass. It will grow back. If he's that precious about it then he should design an area where these items can live permanently. He can then continue whispering love notes to the grass areas unoccupied!

This is what I was going to suggest. Instead of moving to the patio rotate them round the garden so it’s not always one patch of grass.

I'm not a passionate gardener but I love DIY and interior design.
When our DS was born, I had just finished doing up our house and I wanted to enjoy the fruits of my own labour to my own benefit.
DS got a beautiful room out of the process but hell would freeze over before I'd turn my living space or bedroom into primary coloured plastic-stuffed crèche.
Adults are allowed to keep their own identity, dreams and hobbies - even after children.

Let him fret over his garden. The play area is on it's way after all.
I didn't have a garden or garden toys growing up but I was still out from dawn till dusk and #makingmemories didn't pass me buy.

I'd have made him come back from football to put them back.

And every morning I'd be reminding him to put them back.

He's not even adding to your workload. You can't move big things like that alone while keeping kids safe.

A fucking Wendy House?! I thought you were going to be talking about bikes and balls. Wendy houses, slides, sandpits are stationary objects.

I agree about the rotating. As long as it’s done often the grass will be fine.
I also agree with looking after the lawn so that it remains a nice place to play!

DH is a bit Gardeners World, so we designated the far end of our (very long) garden as the children’s section. He then got to be all geeky about flattening it, lining the ground, putting wood chips down etc. DDs can do what they like down there and he doesn’t care.

It sounds like you’re getting the same, so in the meantime could you not just keep the heavy toys on the patio and move the other stuff as needed?

Firstly, I have garden envy from your description and am genuinely happy for you having such a lovely outside space! 😊 Secondly, I agree with you that kids playing outside with ease comes above perfect grass. However- it sounds like you're soon going to solve the problem with the seperate area for the toys. So in the meantime I think let him crack on with fannying about getting things on the patio every evening, but he should move them back each morning. We have a hardy lawn that recovers from such abuse by itself (once we scattered some seeds on a particularly dead bit to help it along and it came back fine), but I don't think that's the type of lawn your DH is cultivating! Seems a shame to create a cost for yourself for the sake of a couple of months. He should definitely be doing the heavy lifting though!

YABU I'm with your DH on this one. It's so hard to get an immaculate lawn!! I don't blame him for this at all. But obviously, to stop it impacting your life, then he needs to either put the stuff back out the next morning, or just keep rotating it around the garden, leaving it on the lawn. But I think your priority should be to get the side garden done for the children, is there a reason why that'll take a few months? Would be good to have it ready for the summer!!

I think it comes back differently from the kind of lawn OP’s DH has. If you want it close-bladed and very green and soft it does need quite a bit of curating

This, we had grass die underneath hutches and guinea pig runs, but it came back on its own.

@Maddy70 what??? Expensive re-turfing? Why? When my kids were little, every year they trashed the garden by playing football. I just put grass seed down and every year a lovely new garden grew. That’s the miracle of plants. Plant them and they grow.

To be honest oP they will have nicer memories on a thicker, softer, lusher lawn. We had a lovely soft green lawn when I was growing up and I still remember how lovely it felt underfoot and I actually remember that more than the things i played with. This sounds like a huge array of toys to have out at once. Can’t you just keep it all on the patio and put one or two things out at a time? Surely you could pop the baby somewhere safe ( where you put them when you shower for example ) while you put a couple of toys out.

But yes your days sound like an episode of the Night Garden: all repeat of the intro song and then Iggle Piggle’s bedtime routine at the end and only a short burst of actual story/ play in the middle !

But why is what’s important to him (his green lawn) more important than what’s important to me (our children being able to play freely outside)

You could equally ask why what you want is more important than what he wants. He clearly puts a lot of effort into the lawn, the kids area will be ready soon - can you really not find a compromise for the sake of two months? To be honest I’d be pretty pissed off if, having worked hard to make the lawn nice it got ruined because garden toys were left on it rather than just being moved at the end of the day when a dedicated area is two months away.

How about every night he moves them round to the other side. So they are moving round in quarters of the lawn. The grass won’t die if it’s not covered permanently. So rather than on the patio just move it round the lawn a bit.