More than a year after our “small” basement project began with the end goal of making the #JGPdreamoffice, all of the spaces are maybe 75% done and decorated. Wait, I take that back…the guest room has nothing on the walls…but we are doing what we can! I have been focusing on the small playroom lately, and wanted to share a bit about it!

We have never had a dedicated room/area just for the kids toys.  We have a little corner in the living room that holds a lot of their stuff, and we try to rotate toys in and out for entertainments sake.  But we just don’t have one of those houses where everything can get stored away in their bedrooms or behind shut doors and look like all of that doesn’t exist (and honestly, it doesn’t really fit our parenting style either). Their rooms are small and have a lot of their toys too, but there is always some overflow in our regular living room– so we were really excited to dedicate a little space just to them in the oddly shaped room in our basement that used to be my office (I have since had a major upgrade to this ;-)).  But we began slowly moving toys into it and re-arranging a few times both because the space is odd and because we wanted it to be really useful and fun space for the kids- so I wanted to share some ideas for you if you are looking to repurpose create a space like this!

1). Carpet is ideal, in my opinion. We have always had most hard floored homes (because visually, that is what we prefer) but it is just more fun for kids to play on carpets. BUT…our kids like playing with vehicles a lot, and those go better on hard floors, so there are two sides there! We didn’t want to (or couldn’t afford?!) put carpet in our whole basement, so our floor is laminate.  But we have a big rug in the main play area so that there is a comfy padded area to be on the floor. I know personally if I’m not semi-comfortable, I am less likely to be on the floor with them–and I want to be on the floor playing and engaging with them. So we definitely recommend carpet or a rug!

2). At the same time– you want some seating! We don’t have this worked out how we picture long term yet, but there is at least something (my beloved polka dot chair and a half from our first house!).  We have friends over to play a lot, and it is just nice to be able to offer some real seating- though I think this can look a lot of different ways!

3). Make sure there are some separate “spaces” if you can. Because we have specific types of play areas separated by walls in the room (lego table over here, toy storage over there, doll house over there, etc), it allows for our kids and/or friends to be separated as need be to have their own space–and sometimes you just need that!

4). Toy storage! This is the proudest part of this space that I am sharing, because it has become so wonderfully functional for us!  You will see many images below, but we bought 13 crates from JoAnn Fabrics (with a coupon of course- we were able to get them for a little less than 10 each).  They can be designed in many different ways to fit different styles of toys (some vertical, some horizontal, etc)–this was just what worked best for our space.  They hold everything, and quite well- and we think it’s a pretty cute way to deal with a wall that was basically dead space because the entry way to another room is right in front of it (so it couldn’t be anything that was particularly long into that space).  Big tip: make sure you adhere them to the wall in some way–obviously they would be clime-able and that could be very scary! But it is the cheapest and largest storage we have for toys, and we love it! I have been known to “style” it pretty cutely with a bit less stuff than you will see in these pictures…but not today! 🙂

Here it is–our travel (ish?) themed toy room!  There is still some work left (and one piece of trim missing ????), but we love it.

Here are those shelves on the left! My husband made this magnet board with metal sheets from Menards and just nailed in trim around it– super easy and the kids LOVE it!