Home Tour: Playroom

Come down the hall to the playroom. 

(Anyone still catching up?  Here are the Entry and the Office.)

Here we're coming through the doorway.

From across the room, you can see the door and the wall with most of the toys.  Tucked in that corner are two folding chairs, an easel, and a tent made from canvas and PVC pipes.  Usually either the tent or the easel is out on rotation, but for some reason they were both put away when I took the pictures.

Here's a close-up of the shelves.  Did you know that big sturdy shelves are really, really expensive?  Like many hundreds of dollars!  These, however, were about $75 each at Lowes, which is way more our speed.  The things on the two lower shelves are "in rotation" right now.  The boys are not allowed to take things down from the higher shelves (for safety reasons), but if they specifically ask for something we do bring it down.  (Though as I'm looking at the picture, I see that one of the bathroom stools is in front of the shelf...  Hmmm...)  The balls and blocks are always available.  The big grey bin is full of dress up clothes. The map wasn't supposed to be hidden, but we moved the shelves a while ago, and never moved the map.

The mini trampoline has seen a lot of use.  The horse is not my favorite toy because it takes up a lot of space for the amount of time the boys play with it.  My sibs and I had a similar horse when we were kids, and we loved it.

And moving on...  There's the TV, the dollhouse (link is about buying a dollhouse for my sons), and a shelf with some DVDs, books, and a few random toys.

The back wall used to have a big quilt hanging there, but we took it down recently because it seemed like the sunlight was fading it a bit.  There also used to be two small armchairs in here, but I hated how much space they took up.  I like the openness of the playroom without them, but Beloved and I miss having someplace comfy to sit when we watch TV.  Any suggestions?

Here's a better view of the reading area.  I love that little table and chairs.  It gets used for reading sometimes, and for crafting sometimes, but honestly it gets used more for climbing and making "forts."  When they want to read, it's more common for the boys to grab their books and then sit on one of the big pillows (which I think you can see in the previous picture).  We recently put away most of our board books, and now our book collection looks so much smaller to me!  I rotate the books that are out on the table, usually three or four at a time, and that really seems to draw them into reading more.  I'd like to have a shelf that makes the fronts of the books visible for easier selection by preschoolers.

Well, that's it for the playroom.  More than you ever wanted to know, right?  Next up is the kids' bedroom.

Comments

[Leah]

Where did you get that doll house? It is totally cool and I NEED to have one...not really but I do think it is really cool. Can you send me the brand/maker etc.
Thanks and Merry Christmas.
Leah

[leigh]

Playrooms are nice, I've often thought of turning the downstairs bedroom into one. However, its downstairs and too far out of sight.

You're kids have a really nice area, and plenty of books, that's great.

[Katie]

I noticed some brown-skinned (for lack of a better word) dolls in the bookshelf. Where did you get them? Do your boys like to play with them?

Just curious!
We have bought 2 brown-skinned dolls so far and are hoping to find some more (quite difficult to find in Scandinavia!)

[Heidi-happy mom]

I love it and I love what you have done with it. I am not surprised that the boys sit on the pillows, I always picture a reading corner with lots of pillows or bean bags or something. bean bags would address your comfy place to sit and watch tv.

we don't have a playroom but I do want to organize all our rooms, I am going to take your organizational skills with me through my home. thanks. love the tour

[Patricia]

ya know what? I have the exact same dollhouse for my son too! I love it but he never plays with it unless he is destroying it with his superheroes.... I am planning on moving it up to his bedroom where it might get used more. I love the fact that you can buy the doll sets in different ethnicities too. here is the website for Leah: http://www.plantoys.com/

I also like the shelf idea - now that Douby is bigger the little rack thing I got from toys'r us isn't working - I can see a larger shelf system like that might work better. But my basement looks much much more messy...I am not a stickler for cleaning up the toys daily.