Having a separate room for kids to play in or keep toys in is much more of a thing now days then it was when I was little. I grew up with 4 kids and 2 parents in a 3 bedroom house. Definitely not a designated playroom in our house, nor do I remember any of my friends having that. Maybe a living area upstairs where an extra TV was, but regardless, we had one for our boys in our 3 bedroom house. We used the office room as our playroom and each boy has their own room as of now.
We created it when Beckham was about 7 months old and redid it when Maddox was a a little over a year old changing the wall color and getting new storage. Both of which were amazing improvements. Last February, after a lot of deliberating, we decided to make the playroom back into an office. Since Maddox still naps (and B does not), we decided not to combine rooms just yet, which meant all of the boys’ toys would need to go in their rooms.
So, here is how we decided to combine a playroom AND a bedroom…old school style 🙂
The view when from Beckham’s door.
We have the IKEA bed with drawers underneath. This is plenty big for all of Beckham’s clothes (shirts + shorts + pj’s, underwear, socks), which frees up any space a dresser would take up.
We put the train table here. The track never stays put together and he has additional tracks now so we keep them all in that big bin. His shoes are in the corner, but I’ve since changed that.
I basically moved the main wall of the playroom to this wall in Beckham’s room. The toy box that was between the IKEA shelves though is in Maddox’s room and I put the small square shelf in between the big ones. I also have the “P-L-A-Y” letters up, but they weren’t up when I took this. The tool table fit perfectly in that little space. And his dirty clothes hamper is still by his door.
And the in Maddox’s room, I put the toy box next to his crib (had to move the crib over to the wall) with the food supplies on top of it, as well as his ginormous animal. I also put the kitchen in front of his crib, but I really hate the look of this. It was really only the best place it fit, but it looks awful there. Oh well. Maddox just sleeps in his crib so it’s not like it’s in the way, it just doesn’t look good aesthetically speaking.
Putting the toys in their rooms has helped us cut down on the excessive amounts of toys. Once Maddox is a little older, we will combine their rooms and make this room the playroom and/or hangout room…unless we have a third of course…yikes! But that is the plan as of now. The only time it’s been hard is if Beckham wants a friend over during Maddox’s nap time…they can’t play because it would wake him up. We never do that, but that possibility is no longer if we did. It’s also harder to keep an eye on them if we’re in the living room.
I really need to organize their toys again (we’ve somehow mixed up a lot) and organize the closets. Beckham has a nice size closet, but it’s really bad right now. Way unorganized and too much stuff. Hope that gave you a glimpse of putting toys inside the bedroom. Are you one with a separate playroom or are your kids toys in their bedrooms too?
I’m with you – we don’t have a separate toy space, so our kids have their toys in their rooms. They each have a storage tote in their closet and then their closets have some shelves where they can put the rest. We just opted to get rid of our kitchen b/c it cluttered up the boys’ room and it’s been so nice to have it more open and spacious and to have room for a small train table. I need to start working on purging some toys now before Christmas!!
We just have a 2 bedroom house, so our boys share a room. They have since we brought our youngest home from the hospital and most of the time it goes okay-even when one napped and the other not. Our oldest just played in the living room or something while the youngest napped. I love having them share a room-most of the time (my boys are 8 and 4). Personally, I’d recommend doing it early vs. later-our oldest was 4 when we had a baby. I think if we would try to do it now we’d have some disagreements. 🙂 He really wanted bunkbeds and when we had the baby he got them. I’m not saying we bribed him or anything! Ha! they also keep (most) of their toys in there. We also have a basement, so we have some things down there, too.
We will need to figure this out! My almost 5 month old has already been given so many toys. They’re currently in the living room kind of taking over. We have a finished basement that could function as a playroom one day but not til she’s old enough to play independently