To be confused about playrooms?

[Wowsostormy]

I just don't get how they work in the home. I get it more if your child is old enough to play unsupervised, but if they're young you surely have to just be in the playroom with them, in which case why not just have toys in the living room? Because you're probably not in the living room much, so isn't the playroom then basically your living room anyway?

And a child old enough to play unattended could surely play in their room instead anyway?

Explain this to me!

YABU - playrooms are great for X reason I haven't grasped

YANBU - pointless room which may as well be the living room

Because all their junk (and there's a lot of it) can be put back in the play room at the end of the day and my living room and their bedrooms stay looking nice and tidy

I didn't have a playroom, for both space and heating reasons. I used to get the kids to tidy up at bedtime. I thought it'd be good for them and they'd all grow up to be neat and tidy adults. They're teenagers now and my plan doesn't seem to be working.

We have a playroom in our new house. It has all the kids' toys in there plus an art and craft table and chairs for painting etc. It stops our living room being cluttered with toys (which is what happened in our own house - we had too many toys for the space really and nowhere to keep them). It was just a bonus that we happened to buy a house with a spare downstairs room *previously owners used it as an office) that we didn't need, so made it a playroom. It has made a positive difference.

We had a separate play area in the living room when the dd's were small and now we also have a playroom AND the play area so the entire house is dominated by toys 🙃

Tbh I quite like it as there are specific areas for the toys/dress up stuff to be and the actual grown up part of the living room is unscathed.

We have a playroom downstairs and our lounge is upstairs. So when I need to be downstairs doing stiff like cooking the kids can be in the playroom or bring stuff to the kitchen without doing the stairs. Also our playroom has a old sofa and wooden floor with basic rug, our lounge has nice sofas with carpet.

If you have a playroom, then you can leave larger projects which take time out. I had a thing called Flower Garden, which could take hours to put together - you had to build the flowers, shrubs, trees etc, the walls and bed, everything, so it was a bit like Lego and Meccano - which would rake me days to arrange and rearrange, and took up as much space as a 5000 piece jigsaw; if I'd had more of it, it would've just got bigger and bigger. Ridiculous to put that away so the room can become an adult room. Similarly, we had Lego and Meccano which we all got very involved with. In those days we weren't constrained by kits abd could build absolutely anything; our projects could cover square metres! Lego and Meccano would be used together, Flower Garden could be roped in too. Then (thought they were on a different scale) we could bring in Sindy, Patch and Action Man, and if necessary (someyimes was) our old building blocks from babyhood. Believe me, our imaginations, ingenuity and resourcefulness would never have got anything like as developed as they did if we'd had to clear things away everyday.

Uh! Is LOVE a playroom. Somewhere for all the toys

they can surely play in a room by themselves from around 2? You keep checking but assuming you dont leave a coal fire burning in there

Our playroom was an absolute Godsend when ours were young!! In fact, the extra downstairs room was what sold the house to us.

It was essentially a giant toy store where they could create havoc & I wasn't precious about spills on the carpet or marks on the walls or painty handprints etc. They had a small TV/DVD player on the wall & a little table/chairs & some beanbags/mini sofa. I loved that I could just shut the door on it all & keep our lounge a relatively clean/tidy, relaxing, adult space. They loved the fact that their train tracks could stay spread all over the floor for days on end & their lego creations never had to be moved, etc. It worked brilliantly for the whole family!

When they were really small, it was almost like a giant playpen as we put a gate on the doorway & I used to be able to put them in there safely while I was cooking or in the loo or hanging out the washing etc!

When their friends came round, they either played in there or in the garden. We are lucky enough to have a downstairs loo, so we always had a strict 'no upstairs' rule which meant their bedrooms stayed relatively tidy & any toys etc that were particularly precious to them could go up there, out of harm's way.

Now we have hulking great teenagers all over the place & we've converted the playroom into a lounge space for them, which again works great for us - it means they can hang out with their mates in there, watching TV or playing XBox etc & we get to keep our lounge space/TV/privacy. Thank God!!

We have a playroom. When kids were little theyd have all their paint arts and crafts Lego etc. in there. Big toys and puzzles would be bought into living room but at their bed time, I'd shove it all away so my living room is a living room. That way when they make a mess with paint, clay, glitter it stays in one room