Playroom - what’s in yours?

[Caspianberg]

We are fortunate to have a room ‘spare’ downstairs. It is the official dining room, but we have space for decent size table in kitchen so never use as dining.

So, we are having full renovation of downstairs in the new year, and this will become playroom/ spare living room/ spare guest bedroom.

It needs to have a sofa bed in, and some storage for bedding and similar, but otherwise it’s open to what we include

Oh and our baby is, well a baby, he will be nearly 1 year when the room is in use.

What are your key things that your young children and toddlers really like and get use out of?

He can of course have toys in living room still so I’m assuming the room will mainly be used at the start for storage and space to set up larger things eventually like a train set.

Room is about 4mx4m

Anything big that they like to have spread out and is a pain to keep packing up and getting out again, but that gets tripped over in bedrooms/sitting room. Lego or Duplo, easel and/or craft table, train set with traintrack, tent or blanket fort. Toy kitchen if no room for that in real kitchen. Bear in mind that he's unlikely to play much in there by himself for quite a while, so you might want to include some bookshelves and a coffee table for yourself as well as the sofa bed so that you can go in there with him and sit in comfort while he plays.

Everything! Sofa-bed, big kallax unit for storage, child's table and chairs for drawing, toy kitchen, lego storage boxes, and other bigger toys like dolls house and toy keyboard.
Our playroom is a godsend!

The key word here is STORAGE. Good toy storage solutions will really improve your life

An armchair for me to sit in while watching my youngest play, plus two toddler sized armchairs. One of those pikler triangles, two sets of wall bars with rope hung between them for hanging and swinging on and for holding up bedsheets when we make a blanket fort, soft IKEA swing, trapeze and a balance beam. I bring down a few toys at a time (stored in a cupboard upstairs) so there's not toys all over the floor.

Our DD is 14 months - we use the spare bedroom as the playroom at the moment.
It has a low sofa bed which she loves climbing up on and I can sit on when shes playing.
We have a small bookcase for her fastened to the wall which is brilliant , big soft cushions on the floor to lay on.
We have her big toy car in there , 2 baskets of toys plus a drawer and a small wardrobe with her clothes in. A small whiteboard with big magnets on it. We also have a little wooden children's table with 2 little chairs which she has just started to use. She plays with her monster/dolls/figures on it and will use for drawing, eating her snacks. It's a fun room, I love it as much as her!

Lots of storage is a very good idea. Stuff at their eye level.

We have clothes rail for dress ups. I think they'd love a toy kitchen but I'm waiting for an older cousin to pass hers on. A low table and chairs with some art stuff (water colours, crayons, origami paper which can be torn up and stuck down, etc.)books, a couple of bean bags, stuffed toys, duplo, dolls house, toy food/cash register etc

Remember their interests change a lot and quickly between 1-3 so don't invest in things. I second the advice re storage. They key for us is rotating his toys so he doesn't get bored of them too quickly - and that means hiding away the ones that aren't currently in use.

We have a huge IKEA Kallax unit with Lego, duplo, puzzles, games, train set etc in. Then a dressing up rail, dolls house, keyboard and toy kitchen.
None of the children use it though (7, 5 and nearly 2). Older ones prefer to play in their bedrooms and the toddler prefers to be surgically attached to my hip. I’m turning it into a library for me!

We have a big sectional couch that turns into a bed, a big tv with Nintendo, train table filled with Lego, 2 IKEA storage units for toys and a play kitchen. Toys and books all over with pictures of the kids and artwork on the walls. It's my favourite room in the house! I'm constantly rearranging and organising things while the kids are at school so when they get home it feels like a new playroom.

Tbh I'd make one of the spaces mostly toy free. I've you either have a toy free spare room which you don't have to tidy/clean everyday when you have a sticky 2 year old running about or you have a tidy/clean living room.

Sometimes you'll put them to bed an just want to sit in an adult space without being surrounded by kid stuff. Give yourself that space!

When we had an official playroom, it had:

• piano
• long credenza for toy storage
• lego storage boxes
• kid's play table with 4 chairs
• armoire

Now that we have tweens/teens, it has:

• armoire for storage
• 3 seater sofa
• 2 puffs
• large Tv, game box
• piano

Excellent. Seems like storage and more storage is key. I will start looking at what to order in to maximise that.

When I say living room fine to play in, I mean to bring stuff in and out from playroom whilst he is small as I assume he won’t want to play in there alone most the time, but yes ideally the living room would stay ‘toy free’ for the evenings as all the larger bits would be in playroom and baskets can be moved back.

Like the idea of a magnetic board for the wall maybe.

It is in view of living room and kitchen so I’m hoping as time goes on he might like playing in there more or when friends over ( if we are ever out of lockdown and he’s allowed friends!)

Are indoor slides/ soft play type climbing worth it, or a waste of space?

Do they usually do arty stuff more at a play table or do you find main dining table is used more?

We have a piano, a bookcase, a childs table and chair set, a tuff tray on a stand, and then lots of the ottoman storage boxes each labelled with what's in them. The boys are only allowed one out at a time so not everything is spread out constantly. We also have shelves they cant reach so our 2 year old cant ruin our 5 year olds creations. They also store all the boxed games, puzzles, paints and pens.

Everything.

The playhouse lived there for a while as our garden isn't particularly small child friendly. It went outside this summer when the youngest turned 2.

Ours is a weird shaped room with a big understairs alcove so during lockdown we put in loads of bookcases. They house playmobil, lego, boardgames, books etc. My old toy cupboard has the craft supplies, duplo and baskets of cars/dinosaurs/holztiger animals etc. Then we have one of those ikea units with the cubes on its side with a castle on it. Dressing up stuff, train set stuff, more books, jigsaw puzzles live in the cubes. We also have one of those step ikea units.
Table with drawers has a racing track on it currently but it's also used as an art space.
Sofa bed
Lots of bright pictures and fairy lights.

Dd and I often set up the playmobil for ds when he comes home from school and because it's near the kitchen, we get loads of use out of it.

We had a small slide/climbing frame in there too until recently. It's now in a bedroom and still gets used at 5 and 2 so it's definitely been worthwhile.

Dh is going to wish I never asked this question. He thinks all the toys of the future will stay in the one small basket we currently have with baby rattles in.
And that room will be his luxury cinema room... 😂

If we had had one I would have had plenty of storage and a messy play area and a comfy sofa to read and snuggle on.

We have exactly the same situation but our children are 2 and a newborn. We have:
2 kallax
Small 2 seater sofa
Tuff tray
Play kitchen

But we also have a chest coffee table in the living room.which is also full of plastic tat stimulating toys

We have a 4m run of Ikea Pax wardrobes, each one serves a function. So one double one for me and Dh for all our coats, shoes, boots, scarves, gloves, bags, one for the children, same. Then a 32 inch tv fits in another, all board games, lego, playdoh, painting, books, sewing machine, overlocker, craft stuff etc. We had a sofa bed in there that the children climbed on, rolled around on, jumped on and guests slept on. A massive pin board for all their drawings.

Basically if you can bank an entire wall with storage then do it. Everything tidied away into it makes the room easily changeable from a playroom to a spare room. If you use baskets/boxes to theme stuff, then everything has a place and the basket lives in a place inside the storage.

They did bring things into the lounge but it all went back at the end of the day.

Mess.

Even though I had a massive, beautiful storage unit built.

We have turned our dining room into a playroom.
I use it as our day time living room and keep everything out of the main living room so it is adults only - no toys to trip over or look at.
Ours is bigger but we have large kallax units with a tv on the wall. Use the kallax draws and keep some empty for books.

The rest is floor space for the kids toys. DTs are nearly 3, we have a toy kitchen, fold-up table for crafts, pikler triangle and slide to defeat the indoor boredom, their table and chairs and a second hand leather sofa that they can trash.

Also included is my ironing pile.

Ours was furnished as a bedroom and we aquired it with wardobes/ drawers. We put shelves into the wardrobes, but have always struggled with the big playset type stuff.

I have a broom and dustpan and brush just for the room so they are clean for sweeping up small bitty stuff like lego and geomags thar take forever to pick up by hand.

Trouble is, it's a cold draughty room that needs stripping out to sort it to make it comfortable and there's always been higher priorites to sort, so it's never been a room to sit in even during the phase when it had a spare sofa in there.

It is mainly a storage/ dumping room which helps the rest of the house out.

Is toy storage better sorted per item more and in smaller baskets, or the majority all in one basket or box? We have a large wooden chest elsewhere in the house that could work nicely as toy storage for larger items as will as a coffee table and art table combo

I prefer by item but it's possibly a preference driven by the amount of stuff. When dc1 was small a toy cupboard worked for everything but as he got bigger and got a sibling, it didn't. We have loads of baskets and tubs on the shelves/cupboards.

For example:
Wooden dinosaurs
Wooden animals (not farm)
Wooden farm (people and animals)
Plastic dinosaurs
Plastic animals
Playmobil dinosaurs
Playmobil animals
All have their own baskets. Multiple baskets can be played with at once but they are put back separately.

In terms of toy storage, smaller baskets are better. If you have a large one, all items will be dumped out to search for the small item which will inevitably fall to the bottom. Guess who will end up picking up all the toys? (hint, not the child).

Ours started off as a true playroom when the kids were small but has grown into more of a second lounge as they've turned into teens.

Then: IKEA trofast toy strorage, foam playmat floor, cabinets for board games etc, tall Billy bookcase, art easel.

Now: sofa bed, beanbags, tv, Xbox, Billy is still there and so is the sideboard with the board games.