I am always interested in how other people arrange their homes. I am sooooo not a home style/feng shui kind of person, but I know what I like and I know what I hate. Something that is not particularly interesting, but damn if it doesn’t need to be handled somehow, is how people deal with the kid’s toy situation. Here’s how it works in my house.
First of all, in an ideal world, we’d have a rec room type situation. It would always be organized and toys would never leave that room and make their way into other areas of my house. Unfortunately, we are only working with three bedrooms and a little over 1600 square feet of space, one-third-ish of which is upstairs, an area of the house we never use except to sleep and shower. I also live with a toddler, so, as you will be shocked to learn, toys somehow make their way all up in my space.
Given that the rec room is a no-go, I’ve had to come up with a situation that I can live with in our downstairs area. Here’s the living room:
To the left (not pictured) is just the TV and a half-wall separating the living room from the dining room (see below.) On the coffee table’s bottom shelf are LG’s books and stacking blocks, as well as her library books, which she keeps separate from her other books (gee, where does she get the need to order and organize her things? HMM.) Over in the corner, to the left of the big couch, is her rocking chair with some of her stuffed animals. I’ve covered it with a blanket.
As you can see, she has a lovely play kitchen, which was a Christmas gift from my parents. It fits quite nicely in that little corner there and I do not hate it. Then of course there are the foam letters and numbers, which take up quite a bit of space, but which also fit quite nicely between the couch and the kitchen (the real kitchen — not pictured.) (I’m just realizing maybe the secret with kid things not making me crazy is that they have to FIT and MAKE SENSE. I can’t just have things thrown around all willy-nilly.)
Anyway, over to the left is the dining room, which we rarely ever use. There is a lot of empty space in here, so this is where I store LG’s “active” toys. Like so:
There’s a little chest which holds her dress-up clothes (hanging out is the cape my aunt bought her. Funny story about the cape. When she first got it, she put it in my purse. She never puts anything in my purse, so it was kind of strange, but like Chris said, it makes sense. If she ever needs to fight crime, her mom will be with her and can help put her cape on.) There’s her shopping cart with sundry items, her tea party supplies, her mini kitchen, and her beauty shop stuff.
In that same room is the front closet under the stairs, where we store a whole hell of a lot of crap, including toys that I switch out to keep things new and exciting. A little drum/music set, blocks, her spinner. AND, there are more toys in her room that I also switch around from time to time. Legos, farm toys, a baby doll and stroller, etc.
In the (real) kitchen, I have allowed some pantry space for crafty type things — coloring books and markers, Play-Doh, etc. — that is at LG level so she can grab them as she wishes.
So that’s how it works here. (There is an opportunity for the dining room to be used as more of a rec room type situation, but I just don’t see that jiving with LG. She likes to be where the action is and in our house, that is in the kitchen. I think a rec room that far away would just go unused. (But oh, there is such good light in there — uhh, during the day, obviously not pictured above — and I would love to turn it into a nice cozy reading nook for ME. No toys allowed.)) Anyway, all this works well and it doesn’t make me crazy. I had an old coworker over the other day (she has seen how neat I keep a work desk) and she almost mentioned the foam letters, but then didn’t say anything. Listen, no matter how OCD a person is about their space, kids have a great way of really fucking all that up, so you just do what you have to do.
How do you handle all the toys? Bonus points if you answer and you don’t have kids. Juuuuuust kidding, keep that to yourself.
I am LOOKING for a solution, but Nothing yet. I mean, the baby just learned how to crawl. But, she still has a significant number of toys. Right now, she has a swing in the living room, and that’s kind of where I dump a lot of her toys when they’re not in use. She also has this big alligator toy, and a playmat – those things just sit on the floor, or if I’m feeling fancy, they go on the hearth. What I really want, is some sort of attractive-for-the-living room piece of furniture that has storage inside of it. No luck finding one so far. But honestly, I used to be one of those people who thought I would never tolerate toys in the living room… And now it doesn’t bother me too terribly much, except when I step on things.
We bought a nice looking “leather” storage bench to store T’s living room toys. Two fabric bins fit inside so the toys are still organized and not just dumped, and we can put the lid on that thing and still look like somewhat civilized adults!
We have a playroom and I am mean and will purposefully toss anything back over the threshold if it starts wandering into the living room.