Since Christmas, I have been weeding through all of the kids toys, adding the new, donating the old, and tossing the ones with missing parts. In all of the chaos, it got me missing my house, and my nicely organized play room area. We have all of the same pieces at our temporary location, but with all the extra floor space, the mess seems to expand as well.
The apartment kitchen has an eat in area, and there is also a dining room. Since we had gotten rid of both of our dining tables, I gave the dining area up for the kids play room. The space works well, and is bigger than the kids play area at our house, but with room, comes more places for crap to sit.
When we were purchasing the house, this room seemed like such a strange spot. It was about only about 10 feet by 8 feet. You couldn't really add any big pieces of furniture, and a desk and chair, would take up too much of the floor space. Since the loft area is just around the corner, we opted for that to be the toy free, lounging location, and for the toys all to be in a central location. This is a great idea if you have the means to do it.
In our place now, the toys seem to get up and walk to the kitchen, the stairs, and I find Lego's in the bathroom, and my office....dang Lego's!!
Since we had a beachy theme throughout the house, I sort of stuck with the same theme, just made it more kid friendly. The chair was one we had in my sons nursery from Ikea, a
Poang Chair. It's a good little rocker ($99), but had a woodland print on it. The chair pad is removable, and I just recovered it with an Ikat print.
To save space, since the room was so skinny, I made a wall mounted book shelf. I saw a book ledge at the doctors office that I liked, but you couldn't fit very many books on it. I even tried to find a planter trough to mount, but couldn't find the right length or depth. So I ended up making these. They are just a simple box construction, slats of wood, screws, wood putty, stained, and painted, and disressed.
They were mounted straight to the wall.
I found these vintage, metal beach shovels on Etsy. They were the perfect color, and how stinkin cute! Every time we would take a beach trip, my son insisted we take them.
On the large wall I made a gallery wall with frames. Notice I didn't say photos. That would require time to sit down, pick photos, and send them off to get printed...
Never did it....
Don't judge!!
But I did plan on doing that, sooooo......I did take 5 different sample colors of paint, and painted the frames in different colors. They were all just a shade or two off from each other. I did hang the same frames up at the apartment, and guess what.....still half empty :) One day!!
For toy storage, I went with cloth boxes,
Drona in a
Kallax shelving unit from Ikea. They have held up pretty good, surprisingly enough.
The curtains were a cheap fix, I use a flat double sheet, cut it in half, and stitched up the edge's, it only cost about $15 for the sheet.
We used a large brown sectional in the lounging space, we had it in our previous house....not super pretty, but super comfy. The rug was $50 from Home Goods, major deal!! A grass cloth basket with a lid, hid the stuffed animals.
The giant wave art was from Ikea, and all the pillows were all from Pottery Barn. Super simple decor, but a good hang out space, to watch movies.
There you have it...a super cheap, and kid friendly space.
Use small spaces, and good storage solutions to house the toys. Find a spot in your home, closets, awkward corners, and weird nooks like this one.
Again, a small space, means less crap makes for a much easier clean up!!!
