A baby gate keeps wildly running children from careening off the edge of the room, down the staircase. The armoire contains a television and the two big drawers below offer storage room for toys. The messy corner is my stash of empty cardboard boxes (which I need to reduce).
Now that John is three, he can play in the bonus room unsupervised when I'm in the kitchen below (where I am most of the day). Mary will be 15 months in a few days and I'm going to be starting very small and slowly expanding how long and under what circumstances she can be up there with John but without a parent. As long as I'm in the kitchen, I'm right within earshot and about three seconds at a bounding pace from being up in the play room. Mary is very good going up and down stairs, but I still always escort her.This will make the den less of a "toy bomb" area. We have been trying to institute a nightly family Rosary, which we pray in the den, and it's been very hard to enforce the rule that the children may not play with toys while we're praying--when we're in their play room! Now the den contains the children's book nook and just a few toys in the trundle drawers of the train table.
And if this doesn't work for us at this time, it's easy to switch back to the way it was. I'm excited about the possibilities!
Jealous here! :)
ReplyDeleteIt looks so good!
Oh how I would love such a bonus room, but alas... I tried to implement a "toys in your bedroom only" rule when we moved into our new house, but Em likes to be with us, so we've ended up with toys in our TV room. At least we've been able to keep them under some semblance of control.
ReplyDeleteI second jealousy! Would love to have such and organized and dedicated toy space! It looks great.
ReplyDeleteJaneane: I have mixed feelings about a toys-only-in-your-room rule. I want the kids around and they definitely want to be around us. But I also don't want a toy bomb in the only public, grown-up room. Yet I also don't want some perfect, untouchable "sitting room." I figure with our layout, the kids will still be around me a lot. All our craft supplies are on the shelves in the kitchen and John usually does several crafts (as simple as coloring) at the table per day. And then there's TV time in the den. Plus I left a few toys in the den, such as puzzles, in hopes that those are interactive and something we'll do together. Right now Mary is too young to be alone long in the bonus room, so I'm sure I'll be spending time up there. It's all an experiment!
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you're keeping some control, as you said. Do you have one toy area in the TV room, like a toy bin or small shelving? Maybe you could limit Emma to toys that can fit in that container and the rest have to be in her room and she can cycle them in and out as she wants. Oh, and I've instituted a rule that all toys with small parts have to live in John's bedroom because Mary is never up there unsupervised, so it cuts down on choking hazards.
I feel the same way Katherine! I can't expect Emma to be in her room all by herself playing when we are downstairs, which is why I relaxed on the rule. We do have one of her two big toy boxes downstairs, but we're planning to move it into her bedroom closet (she's gotten into it maybe 5 times since we moved). I also have a small moving box in the living room where I expect her "downstairs toys" to be contained at the end of the day (it's beginning to overflow, however, so it's time for a purge!).
ReplyDeleteI don't want my house to look like some museum...we do LIVE here...but like you, I don't want a toy bomb either (like it was at the old house...yikes!).