to want to set fire to all my DC toys in desperation?

[honeybooboo123]

Bought and moved into a bigger house with enough room for a playroom. Oh it will be so lovely I thought, somewhere for them to have all their toys downstairs and play like the little darlings they are. Put a play table in there and a bean bag.

Well the little sods move everything into the lounge, the playroom looks like a f*cken hurricane has gone through and I've lost the will to keep tidying it.

Decided to put an exercise bike, sofa and tv in there and try and buy some storage for DS toys- mostly cars, lego and other plastic shite and put most of it in his room.

Is a trip to IKEA needed for Trofast? Any other solutions?

Do you live in my house OP? Ours is exactly the same!

What does the lounge have that the playroom doesn’t? TV/heating/better light/other people?

I feel your pain. Our conservatory is our playroom and I spend so long putting games back together and tidying everything so they can play properly, only for there to be literally nowhere to put your feet a few days later. The next time I say it's all going in the bin I might actually do it. (Stealthy clear out is my plan - there's just too much stuff in there.)

Our house is the very same op. I have a little bit of free time at the moment so im slowly but surely culling the toys. Yesterday I took a black bin liner full of packaging/bits of art work cuttings and broken bits out of there. Still looks like a bomb site but a few minutes each day over the next few weeks and I'm determined to minimise the mess in this house

Lounge has a tv, but that will be sorted soon as putting one in playroom and sofa so the DC can either sit in there and play playstation or I can hide and drink coffee.

we need to get rid of a few things too. I did have expedit shelves with those fabric boxes but they just didn't bother to look inside so never played with stuff. I want the toys tidy but accessible really.

Yes same as my house was, with 4 kids Either put a broom in playroom and Sweep the toys up , or better still pack the whole lot away in seperate labelled containers & only allow one game or set of toys out at a time. Put yourfavourite song on, call it 'pack the toys up' music' on and race to packthe toys by theend of the song??? 🤣 For now, have this 💐🍷and tackle it all later 😀

How old are they?

Could you convert the playroom into grown up lounge (no toys, just calm and tidy for you) and the lounge into a day room?

Mine always wanted to be where I was with their toys, so I changed our house around and made the playroom our living room with the TV & kept the other room as the nice one, without a TV and some half decent furniture not encrusted in the dried stuff that small children seem to ooze.

Toys had to stay in there, apart from special occasions, when they were allowed out, and before bedtime, we all tidied up the toys together (from almost as soon as they could hold something), so that I wasn't the toy slave. Loads of storage really helps because then everything has a place that it gets tidied up to, IYSWIM.

Also keep moving on the old stuff that they don't play with anymore. The charity shop & friends must have been sick of me palming stuff off, but it helped keep on top of it all.

How old are they? I have the black bag rule. Anything not put away that I find anywhere outside of where it should be goes in the black bag. A week to "earn it back" (jobs, writing me a note, extra tidy room etc) otherwise bin or eBay!

DP and I are currently buying a house with a small family room, in addition to the living room and kitchen. Solicitor was like 'that's great! You can put all the toys in there and shut the door!'

Not a chance will that happen. Because I know that half the toys will stay in there, and the rest will be brought into the living room and kitchen so we'll have no toy-free areas. The family room is going to be kept toy-free - just some bookshelves, nice chairs, etc.

they are 3 and 8. It's mainly the 3 year olds toys that are the issue.

hmm issue is that our playroom is only just over 3m by just over 3m, and lounge over twice the size, so we'd be shoehorning us into a tiny room and giving the kids the big nice room for all their crap.

We have exactly this problem - have improved it by buying two little trolleys on wheels (like this)
www.ikea.com/gb/en/products/childrens-ikea-products/children-3-7/small-storage/flisat-toy-storage-with-wheels-art-10298420/?cid=gb%7Cps%7Cpla%7C%7C%7C%7C
And the kids have to go round with their little trolley before bath time and put anything of theirs into it and put it into the playroom
Not perfect but saves me having to do it and the trolleys have proved sufficiently novel to encourage them to do it for now....

Dd recently said in an amazed tone 'is the playroom called the playroom because you're supposed to PLAY in it?!'

We don't have a TV in the playroom, it's TV OR toys.
We do have a sofa so I can sit and have a coffee/MN and say "lovely car dear" at intervals.

But if it's small, they're not going to want to use it either! At least you get to have one nice space rather than none!

Well, you've got xmas coming up, so you need to arm yourselves against it filling back up with mountains of tat immediately! (Get rellies to buy books, which at least don't hurt as much when you step on them with bestockinged feet.)

I went for kallax unit from ikea (have one in most rooms). Then used trofast box's so they can see what toys r in them.

Also have trofast one that looks like steps for smaller box's.

I sort room out about once a month and make them tidy every night

I do this really funny, quirky thing when my kids do something and I want them to do something differently.

I tell them.

I say "Hey guys, time to tidy up" or "Can those go back in your bedrooms now?" and lo and behold, my room is clean again.

From the amount of complaining on this topic I can only assume my method is completely new and unheard of.

Seriously. Why does anyone have mess when you just ask them to tidy it? I really don't get it. If they refuse obviously then your boundaries and discipline rules kick in. Because you have some.

Oh cobwebkitten give over

Get you Cobweb!

honeybooboo, could you get really nice storage in your main living room? A friend of mine had a similar situation, so she installed wall to wall cupboards on one side of her living room & all the kids toys went in there and lo & behold, once tidy-up was done (see not just you Cobweb), her living room was a nice space for adults again.

I think cobweb must have been issued with a different model of children to the rest of us.

We have one cupboard at the bottom of our lounge for toys (4 and 5). But they still bring things down from their bedrooms!!

DS5 is notorious for bringing his cars and car mat down when he knows it stays in his room.

The cupboard was sorted out nicely - they had one shelf each.. well now there's stuff piled on top of it and to the side. The toys are literally stuffed in!

We are swapping bedrooms over soon to prepare a nursery for the baby and to hopefully get DD sleeping in her own bed. (DD and DS are going to share until the baby is old enough to sleep sensibly).

We have those cube units from Argos. They are £20 for 4 cubes - I think cheaper in Ikea but we don't have one near us. The 18L Curver boxes from Wilko fit well and look nice. I am buying 8 of them to fill one of our 8 unit, and then the 4 cubes will just have the books or things that don't need boxes.

We are hoping to get all toys upstairs apart from one box each - at the moment that's Transformers for DS and princesses for DD that are most played with and easiest to put away!!

cobweb has solved parenting, hurrah!

We have this issue with the playroom but I don't want to put a TV in there, I feel as though that would make things worse somehow.

You have to go through the kitchen to get to our sitting room so the kitchen is constantly strewn with crap too