(upbeat music)
- [Voiceover] The Parenting Junkie.
- Hey guys, welcome back to The Parenting Junkie,
the place to go to love parenting
and for parenting from love.
Today I'm going to take you on a tour
of my own personal space,
or my kids play spaces, really.
Following my Simplicity Playroom
and the 10 Toys to Get Rid of Now video,
a lot of you have asked me if I would share
tips for how to design a play space.
You may not know that I am a designer
as well as a parenting coach.
I have tidied up a little bit.
All right, a lot.
Who am I kidding?
This is actually kind of true
to what it usually looks like around here.
You have to keep in mind
that the play space that I'm showing you today
is one that I fell into or designed into
through our own personal likes and needs.
My kids are two and four.
You'll see for this age group
and you'll also see how I've made the space work for us
in terms of us living in a two bedroom apartment
and what we feel works well for us.
Obviously I would design this differently
in different spaces.
What I do want to share with you today
is an exciting idea that I'm formulating currently,
which is about which zones one needs in a home
when you have little kids,
both for their play,
zones that are conducive to healthy, independent play,
and zones that are conducive to
healthy, parental stress reduction.
Yay, stress reduction for parents.
That is what we're all about.
I'm going to share them with you.
Here it goes.
Basically you have three zones.
Let's go take a look.
The messy zone is really a place where kids can get messy,
get their hands dirty,
work on projects.
This is a place for art, for sensory play,
for sewing, for projects that are more complicated
as they grow older such as woodwork or electronics.
In our home, we like to keep a lot of materials
out and available all the time.
The materials that you're seeing now are just the basics
so that our kids always feel that they're invited to create
at any moment.
We keep this in that kind of organizer.
These are these amazing jelly beads.
If you don't know about them, check them out.
They're apparently completely non-toxic.
They grow in water.
They're very fun for sensory and water play.
Kids of all ages love it
and it keeps them absorbed for hours.
Play-Doh, of course, a favorite.
Felt and sewing if your kids are up to that stage
or just felt and cutting.
We like to put in some natural items.
Stickers.
Clay, air-dry clay here.
This is a really cool project called Teifoc bricks
which we've been working on together.
We like to have those for rainy days.
Some Fimo and plasticine.
Then you can also put out things like rice, pasta, beans,
dry sensory play like that as well.
Another really fun one is kinetic sand.
It's absolutely amazing.
It costs a lot so check out recipes for making it yourself.
It's sand that doesn't get everywhere
and doesn't make a huge mess.
I like to keep it in a Tupperware box so it doesn't dry out
but it theoretically never dries out.
Then it's also really important to display
the current projects that you're working on
so that you show your child that these are important
and valuable
and they can enjoy the fruits of their labor.
The quiet zone is all about creating a cozy space.
This is a space where you can hide,
you can be in a soft area.
There are pillows, there are books.
There's a tent or blankets to hide in.
We put our dressing up box here as well,
just some scarves and some old items.
It seems to work well with the tent,
with that kind of atmosphere.
This is where we store our library books.
We like to have a dedicated place
so that we know where our library books are
and just the books that we're currently interested in.
I don't like to overload with a million books
on offer all the time, so we store the rest.
This is just a place to be cuddly.
Sometimes is a pillow fighting
and rough housing space as well.
It's important to keep the lighting in this space
very warm and low,
especially if it's where you do bed time
and where you get ready for unwinding as we do.
This is really also a place that kids can go to
to calm down when they're upset.
You can use it as a place for intimate conversation
and cuddling.
Play zone is really a skills and concentration zone.
You want to keep it really tidy and neat
so don't have too many items
that you can't store,
especially if this is an adult space,
it's nice to display items that are pleasing to you as well.
The types of toys we have here
are Playmobil which we bought secondhand on eBay,
got a whole bunch of that,
blocks are classic.
Got dolls and dolls house.
We try to keep everything gender neutral
and we try not to duplicate the types of toys that we have.
Then if you have tiny little bits,
you want to have a storage system for that
that's manageable.
Here's trains, for example, love those wooden trains.
Lots of fun.
Audiobooks is something that we keep on offer here
instead of videos.
Here's some more animals.
Aren't they cute?
Another thing is empty containers.
Just some white space.
Kids love some empty boxes as well.
This is our kitchen area,
which we like to put in some items from our actual kitchen
and switch out the things that are on offer there.
Magna-Tiles is an absolute favorite.
It's such a fantastic toy.
It's quite the investment, but we found it to be worth it.
This is our dolls house which we love
because it can also be a garage or stool or table
or a million other things.
Here we have just a fun basket with some noise makers
and rattles and drums and flutes and that type of thing.
This is our music corner,
which is lots of fun as well.
This is a storage bag for Lego.
I'm a big fan of Lego,
but as you know it can get absolutely everywhere
and be hard to play with when it's in a bucket
so this is a genius invention.
You just open in out flat like that
and you can access all the pieces.
Even though our kids are kind of young,
they do enjoy Lego already which is lots of fun,
but cleaning up, not so much.
This bag makes it really manageable.
Another thing that we have is occasional toys
that I keep in storage and we bring out from time to time,
rainy days like this box of magnets,
which I'll bring out
or some items that aren't toys
which are often the ultimate favorites.
I like this old typewriter from Etsy.
One other trick that I have is a travel toy bag
so any little knickknacks that you have,
cheap toys, toys that you get for free
or just toys that don't really have a home,
I keep them in this bag
and when we have a doctor's appointment,
a flight, a long drive,
we grab a few of the toys from here.
It's really great
because the kids haven't seen it in a while
because I don't care if it gets lost or broken.
This is a really useful thing for those times
when you need something to entertain them for a little bit.
Cool, so another thing I want to mention to you guys
is that we have a box,
just a big plastic box,
and whenever I see that a toy is going stale,
kind of like a house sitting on the market for too long
and no one's taking interest,
I whip it away and I put it in that box
for two months, three months,
until I feel like it has new life again.
My kids might be interested in it again.
This is a way of reducing the amount of toys that we buy,
of reinvigorating their interest in the toys that we have,
and it works like a gem.
I know that for a lot of you,
your basement is going to be your play space.
That is absolutely fine.
You can easily make a gorgeous, wonderful,
inviting basement play space.
Not only do we not have a basement now,
but even if we did, I would keep my play space
on the same floor in the same area,
close to the kitchen and the lounge,
where I'm going to be spending most of my time
for a couple of reasons.
First of all, my kids are still very young
and they like to have me close by.
Even if I'm not engaging with them,
they just see me reading in the corner
or working in the kitchen,
and they're much more at ease.
They don't keep coming looking for me.
Even in our two bedroom apartment
when I just go over to the next bedroom,
they often disconnect from their engaged state of play
to come and find me.
For me, that works much better.
The second is I really believe in natural light.
I think natural light is such an important part
of making a space pleasant and inviting and healthy.
Light and air is important to me.
Consider those things when you decide
where you want to put your play space,
whether it should be in the basement
or if you can find a corner that makes sense closer to you
if that's the type of home you have.
I so hope you loved this video.
If you did, it would be great if you could share it
with anyone you think might appreciate it.
Please subscribe to the channel
and head on over to theparentingjunkie.com
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I would love to hear from you
what your toy collection looks like,
what your play space looks like,
if you have any questions for me about this.
The absolute best place to have this conversation
is over at theparentingjunkie.com
so head on over there and leave a comment now.
I would love to hear what you have to say.
Keep on parenting from love and loving parenting
because your children need you
almost as much as you need them.
See you next time, bye.
(upbeat music)
- [Voiceover] The Parenting Junkie.