Kids Room

It’s far too easy for toys to trip up our day-to-day lives, and not just be part of the kids’ world.

Watching TV programmes about houses filled with toys, I’m amazed. How can adults live like that? How can the kids? Grown-ups should feel that their house is their home, not just a toy shop; and children should be allowed to play happily in their own home.

How can the twain meet? Well, our home is fairly small, so we’ve had to get pretty good at streamlining our life and keeping our home clean.

Our large living room has to serve several purposes: in the daytime it works as a playarea, as well as my workspace; in the evening it should be a place in which to relax and chill out. The last thing I want is to be sitting in a playroom, when I want to relax. Likewise, when the kids are playing and I’m working I enjoy being with them.

How to do it? Firstly, don’t let the toys spread around the house. We have a huge cupboard full of toys in the kids’ room. We use plastic boxes to store the toys. Every day they select a box to play with.

With our wooden floors, I find plastic toys can make a lot of noise, so we have a playmat. The box of toys goes on the playmat, and the kids play happily for ages. When they need a change of toys, they get to choose another box when they’ve cleared the first up. It’s not rocket science!

When my first was a baby, I like to have all his toys out, which meant he could easily choose what he wanted – that was, of course, before we had quite as many toys as we have now! Nonetheless there were still a fair few toys to deal with. Back then, I came up with a little system: every couple of days I would rotate the toys and clean the toy shelves.

I took the top-shelf toys off and I’d dust the top shelf, then I’d move the next row down, up, and dust that shelf. The toys from each shelf moved up a level each time, and those at the top went to the bottom, so they’d have their turn at being played with as well!

To be honest, I loved that system. I could clean the baby’s room and my son got to see all his toys regularly! There’s nothing as annoying as having to play with the same toys over and over, is there?!).

Nowadays, my kids, thankfully, clear up after themselves. I reckon it’s important for them to be involved in cleaning up after themselves … it’s part of their development. We have systems in place that keep our home – our children-filled home – clean and tidy.