Upstairs playroom?

[Bancha]

Looking for a bit of advice.

We live in an old house and have four bedrooms upstairs. Because it’s old, two of the rooms are huge and two are fairly small. DC2 is en route and I need to move DC1 out of the bedroom next to our room, and into another bedroom. I had always assumed that DC1 would go into the big bedroom and we’d keep the small room at the back as a small spare bedroom (we have another, nicer spare room with a bathroom in the basement).

However, recently I’ve been thinking that feels unfair on DC2. I realise it won’t make a difference for some time to come, but it just hasn’t been sitting right with me. I’m also not keen on toys in bedrooms if I can help it, and feel like DC1 (just turned 2) would get a bit lost in such a big room.

So I was thinking of an upstairs playroom for the DC to share as they get older. We’ve been shuffling furniture around and I’ve been on a decluttering rampage nesting so it’s currently quite empty and DC1 loves running about in there at the moment.

The question is, do upstairs playrooms work? I’m not sure I’d want arts and crafts up there, so we’d keep that in the big family space downstairs. Would the aim be to keep all toys in the playroom to keep the downstairs of the house ‘nice’, or have some toys upstairs and some toys downstairs? At the moment, the toys downstairs aren’t quite at the stage of taking over the house, but then I haven’t got all the baby kit out yet. It might be good to have space to store some things upstairs and out of the way.

I’m not expecting DC to play alone for a good few years yet, so maybe it’s all academic and I shouldn’t even bother?

I plan to have a sofa bed or a day bed in there as well for secondary spare room use as well as reading, playing, and even the dreaded sleepovers as DC get older. But that’s really as far as I’ve got with working out what to do with the room.

Any advice/thoughts/opinions all welcome. Thank you

Are the 2 bedrooms big enough for bed and clothes etc?

Because that's all that's needed at any age.

The 'spare' larger room can then evolve with the kids as the grow.

So have toys in there. Bring down a box at a time for downstairs and have somewhere to store them.

Later on somewhere to keep models.

Eventually a tv, games console and desks.

If they have their bedrooms for simply sleeping and dressing from a young age that'll become the norm for them.
If they're use to bringing down toys and packing them away in the toy room from a young age that'll be normal for them.

And an added bonus - if you want to laze around in bed snuggling dc2 then dc1 only has to drag toys around the corridor to join you

@itsgettingweird yes the lazing about sounds great (if unlikely!). The two smaller rooms are both lovely rooms, just small. Big enough for bed, clothes, books and cuddly toys. I suppose we could technically squeeze more in but they’d start to feel a bit cramped, definitely. The room evolving over time sounds perfect. Downstairs at the moment we have a play tent and we do have ball pit balls but I don’t want a ball pit out permanently so those things would be nice to have upstairs. Especially once I have to break out the jumperoo again!

@chesirecat99 thanks for that I think you’re right it’s worth trying out. I have just been running around the room with DC1 before her bath and we had a great time. I can definitely see her enjoying things like bean bags in there.

We have an upstairs playroom, it works well but 1) it’s only one floor up, loft wouldn’t work. 2) our DC are primary age, it only worked from about reception age up.

But if it’s an otherwise unused room, why not? Gives you a chance of scene if you’re at home on a wet day with both kids.