a better place to play

I never in a million years thought I would be a play space in the living room kind of parent, but here we are... and you know what? It works for us. Well it was working for us. After a few months with this setup, it became clear that our little galley play space needed to be re-thought. And last weekend I finally got around to it...

Before the redesign we had everything lined up against the wall, and Emma would inevitably get bored and start digging all of her toys out of the bottom of those mesh bins. It made for very unfocused and messy play. We also had a lot of toys from when she was younger that we needed to weed out.

Now Emma's toys are all within view, and mostly organized by type of activity. I know what you're thinking - there's no way it still looks like this. Well, I'm happy to report that it does! It's surprisingly much easier to clean up than before. Maybe because everything has its own place and the shelves aren't overflowing with toys.

What I love most about our shared living/play space is that you can't really see it when you first walk into the living room. And I finally found a place to display my beloved Penguin Classics collection of books...

I still have a couple of To Dos for the space, including some art in between the windows and a little upholstered chair to replace this pillow in Emma's reading nook:

What are your thoughts on having a play space in the living room? Major faux pas or an inevitable fact of life with kids?

(PS... try to ignore all the beige-overload. Oh how I can't wait to be a homeowner again.) :)

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roll with the changes

When Emma became mobile a couple of months ago we knew we'd have to make some changes to our living room to give her more space to play. My goal was to be able to go from living room to play room and back again in less than 2 minutes. I knew if it took any more time or effort that our living room would become a permanent playroom and five years from now we'd be one of those desperate couples on Dear Genevieve who used to have semi-decent taste but whose house has become overrun with toys and laundry and kitchy sayings over the door like "a meal without wine... is breakfast!" Oh no. We will not be one of those couples. So, our first step was to buy a bigger rug... we opted for something relatively disposable since babies are not tidy creatures, nor is our 65 lb dog. The Havbro does the job, but I won't be sad to see it go. So now Emma had a nice big rug to play on, but we still had the issue of the coffee table. Then it hit me... what if we sawed off the legs and replaced them with casters so we could easily roll the table out of the way during play time?? I've certainly had crazier ideas, and Jared was on board so we used a circular saw to cut off the legs, and replaced them with the steel casters we ordered off of Amazon. And, voila!

And here's what it looks like during playtime...

Here's a close up of the casters...

It's working out surprisingly well for us, so far. And I actually kind of like the industrial feel the table now has. The only downside is that the casters don't lock, which is a bit concerning for her tiny fingers, and for when she gets strong enough to move the table on her own. So for now we're super careful not to let her play with the wheels (it's not like we leave her unattended anyway, so it's really not an issue). We didn't want to spend a lot on pricey casters in case the experiment was a bust, but now that we know it works we'd be willing to upgrade the casters if it becomes necessary.

If you're wondering what the coffee table looked like before, here's a shot of it in my first "big girl" apartment in Seattle... It's been through three moves since then. Hence all the scratches. :-)

So where do we hide all those toys when play time is over? They all have their own little basket that fits perfectly into the console table. And they're kept at kid height so eventually Emma can help clean up. (And she'll be able to more easily take each and every toy out of there when she decides the one at the very bottom is the one she wants to play with. But I'm choosing not to focus on that part.)

I'm certain these aren't the last of the living room changes... as Emma grows and becomes even more mobile, we'll need to do more baby proofing and likely more decluttering. But for now, operation rolling coffee table has been a great success.