AIBU- garden toys

[MotherOfDragon20]

need opinions on this because I’m about to lose my shit with DH

we’re very lucky to have a very large mature garden, lots of lovely trees and bushes, and a very large lawn. This has become DHs pride and joy, and he does a really good job on maintaining it. The problem is we had 2 kids, 3 year old DD and 12 month old DS who has just started walking but obviously very unsteady and falls a lot. They both love to play outside and we have lots of garden toys. Every night DH goes outside and moves all of the toys onto the patio so the grass doesn’t die underneath them. This drives me absolutely crazy. Every single time the kids want to go outside and play I need to move everything back onto the grass. We also have stairs in the garden so really I can’t take my eyes off the baby for a second incase he heads to the stairs. Some of the toys I can’t move myself like the Wendy house and the sandpit so really they are useless. So moving 2 slides, a mud kitchen, sand pit, Wendy house, various cars, tunnels, tractors, ball pit etc is actually very difficult while keeping an eye on the baby. I have asked him a hundred times to stop it and really this just isn’t the time in our life for a perfectly manicured lawn and it’s more important for the kids to have a safe garden to play in. He agrees, apologies, says agrees to stop it, yet here we are again a lovely day looking at garden with all the toys piled on the deck. I know it’s not a massive deal but as anyone who has young kids will testify to, anything that makes life that little bit harder is just a pita.

AIBU- really not a big deal.

IANBU- bury him under his precious bloody grass

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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?

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.

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.

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