Way back in episode 28, I talked about two reasons why your playroom organization isn't working for you and how to fix them. But today I want to dig way deeper into why I think having a playroom is not even a good idea. And if you have one, what do you do with it now? And if you live in a small house and you're like, well, I've never had a playroom because I just don't have the space for it, then what is the better option? And maybe this is a big win for you instead.
So let's dig into all of these ideas and come out with some tactical steps to make sort of the toy chaos in your life feel a lot better. A wise person once said, everybody is a genius, but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it's stupid. Well, Fish, quit trying to climb trees while getting advice from well-intentioned monkeys. It's time to jump in the water and learn how to swim with the current of your life.
I'm Joy, a professional organizer, mom of four, and fellow Fishbrain. If you're looking for a place to get understanding, encouragement, and ideas for your home that actually fit how your brain thinks, then I'm glad you're here. Let's ditch the type A advice and embrace what makes our brains and our homes unique. Together, we could have a joy-loving home.
Okay, let's start with the fact that playrooms are, I don't want to call them a modern phenomenon because they've been around for quite a while, but they didn't exist in homes that were built in the 50s, 60s, 70s.
They probably burst onto the scene in the 80s with sort of the beginning of these, what we would have called McMansions back in the day, where suddenly we were marketed to by real estate people that having a playroom was going to answer all kinds of, it was the answer to all of the toy chaos that was going to be around our homes. Because there was a dedicated space for all the kids toys to live and for our kids to play in.
And so now our main living spaces would be toy free and, and just peaceful and ready for company at all times, which any of us who have existed with kids know is just not realistic. You may have the most incredible space for your kids to play. It's big, it's bright, it's beautiful. It's decorated with lots of fun Exciting colors And just Search on Pinterest or Instagram At Playrooms And the. They're often inspiring and stunning and, you know, the things of envy.
Doesn't mean the kids are in there playing in them. Because if you are being realistic, you know that somehow the toys keep getting dragged from the playroom into all the main spaces because your kids like to be where you are. They just do. And if your kids are varying ages, you want them nearby enough to supervise things anyway.
So what benefit is it to you when you really need to be in the kitchen either cleaning up from breakfast or working on dinner or just, you know, plopping down at the table and trying to get a couple things done paperwork wise. And you are like, wait, I need to be up over in the playroom with the kids. And now you're not feeling like you ever get anything done because you need to be where they are and you're wanting them to play with their toys and their toys are over there.
So none of it is working the way everybody said it would work. There's nothing wrong with how you parent. There's nothing wrong with, you know, we could go dig deep into all of it. But I do want to say, who am I? Who am I to speak on this? I do have four kids that are mostly grown now. I was an elementary school teacher. I did get my certifications in both early childhood education and elementary education.
So I can speak to, and I am going to go way deep into some old education stuff that isn't talked about a lot now. But I do want to bring it up because I do think it's some valuable insight that I don't think all parents are taught as part of like just the development of kids this age, right? So the first one being having your kids nearby and the socialization they get from just seeing and experiencing the world that you live in is all useful.
It's okay for them to see you cleaning up the kitchen and tidying things up and making messes and getting things done and having them exist alongside you in life. That always occurred in the history of kids existing in this world. In the pioneer days, You didn't have a separate playroom to go shoo your kid to. They were either strapped to you or they were, you know, being watched by an older kid or they were along doing chores at a very early age that just had them contributing to life.
There weren't that many toys, so their version of play might have been working on something that, and ironically was a chore because it was their form of play and they were nearby and they learned how to exist in their own space because they were part of it. They were always nearby.
And this effort to sort of push our kids out to some playroom or some other space that's intended for them and taking them out of just being part of a family and seeing what different people are doing at different ages isn't beneficial. I'm not saying you have to have your kids strapped to you at all times. And I'm not saying that independent play isn't important.
But if you really sit down and examine it, you may discover they play more independently when they're near you, not in your face, not in your space, not begging you to come into the playroom with them and play with them because the playroom seems like a very lonely space away from you.
It's you going about your business and then plopping down on a floor near you with some toys and all of a sudden you realize you actually got to concentrate for a few seconds and they kind of got caught up in their little world. All of that is important, useful developmental steps along the way of growing into a useful human being. Useful is probably not the right word there. But you get what I mean.
So that bill of goods we were sold about this wonderful playroom that was going to solve the act of toys being all over our house was not the right solution. And reasons why I don't love them. One, the removal from where life happens in the family. They don't want to be apart from the family. They want to be with you. So we've covered that. And two, when you have this big, bright, beautiful space, you feel like you need to fill it.
We just, as humans, we feel like we need to fill the space we're living in. And you think with kids, it needs to be bright and colorful and engaging and stimulating and whatever. So you put things on the walls and you start putting up containers and shelves and vertical bins and puzzle tables and game tables and all of a sudden you're feeling this need to fill the space. And so you have more toys than you need and then they change.
Over stimulated and don't even know what to play with. And so they don't play with their toys. And then you think, well, it's because they're bored of their toys, and I need to get more toys. And so it creates this really bad cycle of, well, let's get them something new. And then they'll play with it. And then it's more stuff in there. And then the space is overwhelming. And then they don't play with it. And it's a vicious cycle of just too much stuff.
There are studies after studies after studies that kids are more creative, more independent, more engaged when they're. Living in a simplified environment, when they are in a simplified space that doesn't have this overwhelming hit you in the face stimulus of stuff coming at them. And so the act of having an entire playroom dedicated to toys makes you feel like you're supposed to fill it.
So it's counteracting what should actually be what you want to provide for your kids, which is a very simplified environment with just a few engaging, imaginative play items. It doesn't have to make all the sounds and do all the things. It's far more engaging for them to have a set of blocks and a few little people and they create this scenario. They can build the playhouses and the little cities and the villages. It doesn't have to be a carpet with roads paved on it.
They are really creative when given the chance to just be in that less simplified space. I will tell you the number of times when I finally had a dedicated playroom, which was our third house that we had moved into. And it would get full of stuff. It would be a mess.
The kids would never want to play in it and I would finally have enough and I would just go, I'm setting aside a day where all I'm doing is being in there and I would be overwhelmed and I didn't even realize what I was doing at the time. But for us, it was just unbelievable. A third floor that had just sort of been finished out attic space, if you will. And it had a lot of sloped ceilings and it kind of went around the stairs.
So it had spaces, but there were no doors, there were no walls, there was, there were walls, obviously, it was just the outside of the house. It wasn't divided, there were no closets. That's what I'm trying to get. There was no closet. So I would just literally start pushing everything into one corner. And I would be like, nobody's allowed to touch this until I can sort through it.
And I would just vacuum out the space and inevitably we would have to start running somewhere for one of the kids and we wouldn't get back to it. And so I would literally throw sheets or blankets to hide it, just to cover it up and say, nobody touches this. This is, nobody touches anything behind here.
And the next thing I know, my kids would be up there running and playing and they would get one ball out and create some crazy game and would be giggling and laughing and having a blast for an hour. And I'm like, I haven't gotten you to play up there with 400 toys in three months. And now the day I scoop everything out of the way, you have played up there nonstop with one ball and an empty room.
And I know you guys feel me with this because I know you have probably experienced that at some point when you've done the same thing, when you just have enough and you just strip all of it away and just see what happens. And if you've never tried that, I really, really encourage you to figure out a way, if you have a spare guest room and nobody's going to be there for a while, to just haul everything in there, shut the door and tell them no more and just see what happens in the actual playroom.
Like if they actually start playing in it, that's a lot to do, but I'm jest. It's a thought out there. I'm just going to float it in your heads. But anyway, so let's talk. That whole bill of goods we were sold is not helpful. It's not working. But you're like, okay, so I have a playroom, Joy. What do you want me to do with it now? What am I supposed to do with this room that is my dedicated playroom?
Or if you're like, oh, great, I have a small house. We've never had a playroom, but somehow I still have toys all over the place. So what would you like me to do, Joy? How am I solving my toy clutter problem? All right. I want to just reintroduce you to an early childhood developmental stage that exists. It's called the transportation schema. And I don't think pediatricians never necessarily talked to us about this much.
I don't know where we learn our developmental stages of child existence unless you're just going on the internet looking for it. So if anybody wants to go look up transportation schema, you can see that this stage of your toddlers starts the minute they can actually start independently walking for themselves, which means their hands are free. And they first sort of get excited about just moving themselves from a space to space. It's a necessarily developmental stage that they need to go through.
And then they start realizing I can put things in my hands and I can take things with me from space to space and so if you've ever had a toddler just sort of playing independently somewhere and all of a sudden you start noticing they are taking all of the books off their little bookcase and carting them somewhere either they might dump them in the middle of their room or they might carry them down the hall and dump them on the living room and like,
okay, here we are dragging all your toys out. Why are we dragging all your toys out again? Why are all the toys constantly being dragged to the living room? One is they want to be near you, but two, it is part of this transportation schema. And it lasts from the moment they can start walking well into and possibly through kindergarten age. So when they're home with you and all the chaos seems to be all around you. They're actually going through this really important developmental stage.
And the things that they are learning through this process is they improve their coordination. It's them learning, I can carry one thing and still keep myself balanced. I can carry two things. I can carry a big thing. Oops, I can't carry that many things. And you hear the clatter of things falling. All of that is actually learning. It's teaching their brains how things move through space. It's developing that coordination. It's helping them understand spatial awareness.
It's I can fit through this tiny space with just me or me in a small item or whatever. Suddenly I have a big thing and I get frustrated because I can't get it to fit through this space. And you might see them sit down and throw a little tantrum. But it's their brain then understanding some spatial awareness. They will start to discover that some things, big things don't fit in small spaces. All of that is learning. That is a development process they will go through.
This then creates this trigger into their problem solving. how can I transport my biggest stuffed animal when I can't see around it and suddenly I'm walking into a wall how can I if I keep pushing really hard at this you know item and it suddenly shoots through the space I wanted it to go through I start to learn this cause and effect of of my effort produces a result or it doesn't. And I now problem solve why it didn't.
I also start to realize that there's some object permanence, which is I can carry a book from my bedroom into the living room and then I go back to my bedroom and it's gone. But then later I go out to the living room and it's, oh, here it is. It still exists. I have just transported it. So all of these learning opportunities that happen when your kids are dragging their toys all over your house. If that helps you at all to just take a breath and be like, okay.
Okay, this is a whole developmental stage that they're going to go through and look at all of these amazing things that they're learning as part of this process. And so do you still want to also teach them about tidying up of space when you're done. And we need to make space for everybody in this room. And so sometimes your things need to be put away. All of that is all relevant things to be teaching them. I'm not saying never clean up because this whole transportation schema has to happen.
And you can't ever have a clean home anytime you have kids that are in the toddler through kindergarten stage. But I'm saying, be aware that it's not just this effort to make a mess. Like there's a lot going on when kids are permitted to just relax into their environment and free play. So what are the hindrances of this? One of the biggest hindrances is excess stuff. And I know, guys, I know it always boils down to declutter, declutter, declutter, declutter and simplify.
But it really does help people. When they can see a clear path of, I have places where I can drag toys to and then I can drag them back from. And when there's just too many things and too much simula and too much stuff everywhere, I don't see the correlation between things out and things put away. And I don't have this ability to drag something from here to there because there is just as over cluttered as here.
I hope I'm making sense there. I hope you're tracking me with that because I feel like that got a little muddy. But what I'm trying to say is if you happen to have a playroom and you still have toys all over your main living spaces, what can you do? So this is when, and if you want to go back and I'll link episode 28 into the show notes, I want you to stop thinking of your playroom as the playroom, especially if nobody's ever playing in there, and start thinking of it as the toy library.
And if you don't have a playroom, and you have a closet, or a storage area in the basement, or a storage area in the attic, or a storage area in the garage, or somewhere where you can designate a cabinet, or a couple shelves on a closet, or somewhere where it is removed from the main living space. And if this is your playroom, then you can now reference it as the toy library. And it is, if your kids have been exposed to libraries, if they haven't,
please expose them to it. This is somebody who loves children's literature too. So read aloud, read aloud, read aloud to your kids all the time. Expose them to the library, expose them to the library and then you can start talking about the toy library. It's a win-win. But it's a whole another podcast. I digress. I just want you, like if I could talk to home builders going forward, I would love to say quit building playrooms. Quit building them.
It would be amazing if like there was a pantry off a kitchen that was for food and there was like a toy pantry that was just wherever on the main floor so it's accessible, or it could be on the second floor, start creating toy pantries instead. Wouldn't that be amazing if you just had a place that was a finite amount of space and you said to yourself, I want all of the toys we own to be able to be put away in the toy pantry.
And when it doesn't shut, when the door doesn't shut anymore and I can't have control over how much they can get in and out of there... It's time to purge. It would be a self-selecting purging moment. You can do that with your playroom. Simplify it down to an amount that is easy to swap out. Now, where are you swapping it out to? And I just did this for a client, so I can speak about it very concretely. She's got three young kids. Well, two and one on the way.
We're setting her up for future success. there is a cabinet underneath the television that is mounted to the wall we all off many of us have those and we set it up so you open that cabinet there are four easy grab baskets under there and then there is a toy very lightweight wicker trunk that has a lid that is the amount of stuff that we're allowing in the main living space.
So you've got these quick baskets. You could set a timer for three minutes and you could be like, we got to get all the toys away in three minutes and they can dump them into those baskets, slide them into the TV cabinet, shut the doors. All the big stuff can be dumped down into the wicker toy chest. The lid shuts. All of a sudden the living space is peaceful. You can go get the kids off to bed and you can sit down afterwards and not stare at all the toys.
It's actually very doable. And the self-policing action that having those limited spaces in your main living because they're part of your family and they should be allowed in your main living spaces. Is if it can't be cleaned up in five minutes, if it can't be stashed away in the space that you've allotted, it is time to go, oh, we need to assess how many toys were dragged over here. We need to decide the favorite ones to keep put. And we need to put the rest back in the toy library.
We need to start swapping out systems. You can take one basket away from the TV area and bring a whole new basket out of the toy library in. So it's now exciting and new. You can start to see all of these toys constantly end up in my main space. And there are six months that I've not seen anybody touch half of the toys in the toy library. Easy way to know what to purge suddenly. Suddenly you can donate all those away and keep it at a minimum.
And I do this podcast leading up to Christmas because you know they're about to get inundated with a bunch of new stuff. And the agony of new stuff is that it doesn't have a home. You immediately have a whole bunch of stuff without a home. And it's the things without a home that drive you crazy. So you need to start thinning out so that you have the space to put new stuff in.
And this would be a great way over the next 30 days during November to say, okay, I don't have the bandwidth or the energy with all the things that are about to hit with the holidays to overhaul my playroom and suddenly turn it into a totally library. Great, don't. But drag everything that has been brought into the main space, back into that toy library slash playroom, decide what your family is comfortable with of this amount of space feels good in our main space.
This feels good to let our kids play near us independently, play near us with great imagination. These are the items we're cool with being drug over here into the main space.
And then we also know we can quickly stash it as a five-minute new bedtime routine that they're going to get used to during the month of November and then see the other things they sort of wander into the playroom to get and drag into the main space part of that transportation schema they're gonna do it but notice what things they gravitate to and if it's not the really super cool thing that had all the bells and whistles and lights and plastic and stuff that you thought they were going to love.
I know it's hard because you spent good money on it, but that's the stuff to go ahead and move on out before new stuff comes in. So I hope this is helpful. I hope you thinking about all of this stuff everywhere and it's sort of a new light. It's part of the learning, but you still have the ability to control it. And your ability to control it is your ability to simplify it down because you're going to feel better. They are going to feel better. And all of it's going to help.
It's just going to help the vibe of the whole home. Let's make it a joy-loving home. Let's bring the joy out into the living room. Let's let them play. But let's also bring the joy to you at night when you get to sit down and you get to decompress from all of the chaos that will be coming with the holidays. All right. Stop there. This one got a really long. But yeah, I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you got something out of it.
Please, please, please never hesitate to reach out to me with thoughts or comments because I would love to hear them. I am joy at joylovinghome.com if you ever want to email or you can find me over on Instagram at joylovinghome. Send me a DM. I check those out as well. I also have a free podcast community. To get there, you just type in bit.ly slash joylovingcommunity. There's no joylovinghomecommunity.
I'll put the link in the show notes because for some reason I haven't said that in so long and I'm now messing that up. But you can join us over there. Ask questions in the group. Send us a picture of what's going on if you want some ideas. I'm more than happy to weigh in on ways that you can shift up your main living space or your quote unquote toy library slash playroom so that it works better for you. I'd love to share those thoughts. Have a good one and continue to choose joy.