Living Room and Playroom Combo?

Jen748

Anyone use their living room as their playroom too? We currently have a playroom, but might be needing that room for a nursery since we are TTC so we are looking at moving a room full of toys elsewhere. We have a basement, but it's all underground (no windows) so it feels slightly cave like. We are thinking instead of making it the playroom, we could somehow turn our living room into a combo room without making it look like Toys R Us threw up in it.

We can do the bookcases/storage bins, but my main concern is finding a place for the play kitchen, grill, and little table/chairs.

Does anyone have any photos or suggestions for going about doing this? Thanks!

lmdbww

Our current living room is like this. We have a storage ottoman full of toys and everything else goes into one corner of the room (so when it's cleaned up it doesn't "scream toys".)  It works well.

DD has the smallest play kitchen, that is on the corner, next to that is bins of stuff, and a big storage bin full (it is next to the loveseat which has tall arms so almost everything is hidden).

Sweet Sadie Mae

Hmm I wouldn't be able to do this myself. Our playroom looks like a bomb went off in toys r us. My child insists on having no toys in containers or on shelves. Its like opposite ocd. If you can get away with it I'd say go fir it!

KTzMOH

this is how our living room is now.... we have a book case with bins where the little toys get stored. We bought a niceish looking play kitchen so it doesn't look bad and integrates with the rest of our decor, and we bought a big canvas bucket from pottery barn that has casters on it, so all the other toys get put away in there and rolled to the side of the room. I don't love it, but we don't have a choice in our current place. In  our new house, we will have a formal living room and a secondary living space that we will use as a casual living room and play room. It's big enough that we can situate the sofa and a sofa table to kind of divide the room a bit so that there are two defined areas.

 

In my opinion, if you are going to combine play room with living space, it's worth it to invest in some nic-ish looking storage options and upgrade the play kitchen to the wooden versions. That went a long way for us.

 

Good luck with your TTC!

brianabrad

My BFF has a 2-year old, a new born and a very small house. There living room is also the playroom. One tactic she uses is making up bins of toys and switching them out every week or so. So in her storage space, she has bins of different toys. She said this allows DS to enjoy all his toys but not long enough to get bored with a certain one. It also allows her to not have her toys overtake the space since it still needs to function as a living room for her and H.

cotner

We have a very long living room.  Until recently it was also the toy room.   We pulled our couch out 7 feet from the wall and did an area rug to create the LR space between the couch 2 chairs and the TV.  Behind the couch is the toy area with a closetmaid 9 cube organizer and the cloth bins.  We didn't do a rug there so they have hard space to run their cars.  The toys get pulled into the LR space, but put away (usually) every night.  Even now with a play room upstairs they bring their toys down so some are still stored behind the couch.  It was fine for casual company, but we put the big toys in a closet when needed.