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Original poster

We don’t have a playroom

161 replies

Lliitlllee · 03/01/2025 22:12

Someone please reassure me this is normal? Stupidly getting mum guilt over it as I watch tik toks of people rearranging their playrooms after Christmas !

Our house is a bit of a squeeze. Open plan downstairs but thank goodness for Ikea kallax that helps store so much! But we pay 2 sets of nursery fees so moving isn’t imminent

We’d love a bigger house and I dream of an extra room downstairs for my kids to have all their toys laid out! Ours isn’t majorly organised I try to rotate them etc

but yes - please tell me lots of you don’t have playrooms???

OP posts:
NewYearNewJob2024 · 03/01/2025 23:54

We have one but like others have said, it is more like a toy storage room!! If we didn't have it, I don't know where we'd keep everything! But it's certainly not the be all and end all, so don't worry!

Sometimeswinning · 03/01/2025 23:55

I have a playroom. All toys ended up being carried through and played with in the living room though. So it actually didn’t end up doing what I thought it was supposed to, (me relaxing in my tidy space whilst they played beautifully in another room)

TheMoth · 03/01/2025 23:55

We had a kitchen/ diner then into living room. Diner bit was where I worked in evenings and weekends. Kids had a kalax in the dining bit. It was very squashed, but meant that I could pretend to interact with my kids while I marked etc.
The house felt chaotic for years, but in reality, not that many.

thaegumathteth · 03/01/2025 23:55

We do have a playroom but it's basically just an elaborate storage space because nobody has ever played in there.

AshCrapp · 03/01/2025 23:57

Probably have my friends have a playroom for their kids. Mine don't, and also share a room. I feel bad about the room sharing, not the lack of playroom.

lensais · 04/01/2025 00:02

We have a playroom now but until dd was 4 we lived in a flat without one. Tbh she had just as much space to play in that flat, because we let her toys take over the living room and it turned into a playroom with a sofa really! She shared a room with us for those 4 years and her baby sister too, and I quite miss the cosiness of us sleeping all together.

Our current playroom is technically half of a big open plan kitchen diner, so the kids are within eyeshot/earshot and not separated from us.

BogRollBOGOF · 04/01/2025 00:09

We had one. It was nice to have additional space for storage and not have to constantly tip toe around/ break up brio tracks, but the reality was that it was a total bastard to tidy up and always came as a low priority to sort out. The DCs dragged most toys back out into the more used living spaces. The advantage of the playroom was that stuff could be dragged back in there.

The DCs shared a bedroom for years so they're not totally spoilt Grin

A playroom is a nice to have. It's not essential or a default. You're not doing your children a disservice by not having one.

Mopsy567 · 04/01/2025 00:17

No playroom here either, we have toys in the living room and bedtroom and I've just accepted this is how it will be for the next few years. Embrace the mess - except stepping on Lego (ouch!)

OrlandoFurious · 04/01/2025 00:20

Time to get off social media.

PeapodBurgundy · 04/01/2025 00:21

We do have a playroom, it's a self build conservatory that we put on the back of the house. Despite digging foundations, the patio sank, resulting in me having to remove a strip of lawn and install a french drain. We spent the last of our (very limited) house renovation pot on the conservatory, expecting to be a two income household once I returned to work after having DD. I'm now living in the house as a single parent, I can only work inside the school day, as none of the childcare for my DC's school will take them any more due to their high needs (one diagnosed, the other on the endless waiting list for diagnosis). The house is falling apart around my ears, and I can't afford to fix it, or work more to get more income.

I need the following big jobs done, there's also cosmetic work, and the garden fence is down (again):

-Replacement guttering at the back of the house (my bedroom ceiling is persistently mouldy)
-The kitchen needs re-wiring (the oven and hob plugged into one of the wall sockets so I have an extension cord permanently coming from the cupboard, over the work surface and into the wall)
-The outdoor socket needs replacing, my tumble dryer and freezer are connected via an extension lead fed through the kitchen window (another wire railing over the counter tops, and I can't close the window)

On photos, the playroom looks lovely. The rest of the house is frankly dangerous! You can't judge from small insights into somebody's home or life. Don't make yourself feel bad based on social media pictures.

Twinklybeam · 04/01/2025 00:25

I had a playroom as a small child, but to be honest I just remember it as a room where the toys were stored. There was a spare bed in the room and my cousin slept there some weekends when he was allowed out of boarding school (his parents lived abroad). It wasn’t a space anyone ever played in.

User839516 · 04/01/2025 00:39

We have a beautiful playroom with all the toys set out nicely, there’s no tv or devices, it’s semi-open plan with the kitchen/dining room, I think it might actually be the biggest room in the house. It’s used every single day. But I’ve got 3 young kids and I’m a SAHM so that’s something we prioritised. The flip side is I feel bad we don’t have better outdoor space for them (our garden is tiny) or that we’ve never taken them on holiday. I just think as a mum you’ll always find something to feel bad about 🤷🏻‍♀️

mondaytosunday · 04/01/2025 01:06

Yea - we did have a playroom (where the only TV was) but I don't recall any friends having one. I didn't have one for my kids. We had a family room I guess that's the closest thing.

CouldItBeAnyMoreObvious · 04/01/2025 06:45

Hold the front page: 'House doesn't have a playroom'
In an exclusive expose, we scour the country for reasons why seemingly intelligent people, or at least those that breath in and out, seem to think that vacuous airheads who post their 'insights' on social media, are the arbiters of taste

Getmeonaflight · 04/01/2025 06:53

Stay off social media....its mostly bullshit

Nevertoocoldforicecream · 04/01/2025 06:54

We've a room that could be used for a playroom if we wanted it to be, but we'd never have one. I prefer dd to play where we are, although she could choose to do so in her room if she fancied it. I also think they make it too easy to have way more toys than needed.

HappiestSleeping · 04/01/2025 06:57

I have a playroom.

I am in my mid 50s though, it is mine (i.e. not for a child - although some would argue that I still am a child), and it has taken 30 years of hard work to be able to afford it. I certainly didn't have one as a child, and nobody I knew did either despite some of them coming from wealthy backgrounds. In fact, on thinking, I don't think I've ever known anyone with a playroom for a child.

Pumpkinseason3 · 04/01/2025 07:00

We do have one - BUT, purely because DS is a terrible sleeper and I don’t want him having toys in his bedroom at the moment. He’s in a tiny box room (literally squeezed in a single bed and wardrobe) & we have our dining table very much crammed in at one end of our livingroom and the “playroom” is what should be the dining room or third bedroom (tiny 3 bed bungalow).

In a few years (when he’s hopefully a better sleeper) the playroom couch will come out and his bed will go in there. Currently he’d be up at all hours playing with toys 🫠

“Playroom” is really just storage anyway - DS is only 4 so toys tend to get spread through the house and he plays wherever I am.

I only know one other family with a playroom (it’s in a conservatory). And didn’t have one or know anyone with one growing up so definitely more the norm not to have one!

Damnloginpopup · 04/01/2025 07:02

My daughter has her whole house to play in. The staff take her. She's two. I'd feel guilty if she had to grow up in an empty pringles tube like I did. With my ten siblings. After we were orphaned.

Richiewoo · 04/01/2025 07:02

First world problem.

Diomi · 04/01/2025 07:15

Of course loads of people don’t have playrooms.

TwoLeftSocksWithHoles · 04/01/2025 07:20

No playroom here, it's all a bit cramped.
We had to put the snooker tables in the Orangery, because the Snooker Room was full of chairs from the Ballroom which we had cleared for games as the Skittle Alley floor was being re-sanded.
It's been a bit of a nightmare this Christmas, I can tell you. We had to put the staff up in a local hotel as our parents were using BOTH annexes!
We did think of using the stables for the staff (not the Chef of course!) as we thought it would add some 'je ne sais quoi' to this year's Christmas Events.
What a palaver, roll on summer when we can get back to the Med.

TickTockPolly · 04/01/2025 07:24

We have a playroom. The kids never play in it. They bring all their toys into the lounge and I have to spend time putting them all back.

RoseMarigoldViolet · 04/01/2025 07:42

The living room is the play room!

Wonderwall23 · 04/01/2025 07:44

Stop worrying!

We have a small house and only the one reception room so no playroom. DS just always played in the same room as us. Now he's older he plays in his room.

Growing up I lived in a big house with two extra reception rooms. I believe one was a play room for a while...but we rarely used it! I do think it's lovely to have an extra room for a whole host of reasons but definitely not a necessity.