How To Create A Playroom For Your Child Without Spending Alot Of Money
Jul 04 '06
The Bottom Line If you are in the process of creating a playroom for your child then perhaps some of these suggestions may help you do it without breaking the bank.
When my husband and I moved our downstairs bedroom upstairs into one of the rooms we remodelled, I suddenly had an extra room off my kitchen. I had always wanted that room to be my 4 year old daughter's playroom but with Christmas being right around the corner, I knew I wouldn't have a lot of extra money to spend on redecorating this room so I knew that I would have to be creative.
Carpet & Wall Color
One of the things I realized right off was that I wouldn't have the money to go out and buy new carpeting for this room. Had I been decorating this room during the summer then maybe but because Christmas was literally only 2 weeks away at the time, all our extra money was tied up in Christmas shopping. Then I realized something else.....why would I want to buy new carpeting for a room when the likely hood of spilled food, juice, fingerpaints, etc... was not only possible but probable? My advice would be to keep the carpeting already in the room unless it is so nasty that it's actually a health hazard, for example, a room that the family dog or cat has repeatedly urinated on. The carpet in my daughter's playroom is mint green and it was just a little dingy. All I did was shampoo it and it looked brand new. Since I borrowed the carpet shampooer from my mother-in-law, the cost to me was nothing and yet the carpet looked just as good as if I had gone out and purchased a new one. My instincts were correct by the way as I have cleaned untold amounts of watercolor paints, spilled milk and crushed crackers from that carpet. Buying a new one would have just been a waste of money in the long run.
Now on to wall color....every room is different and it will really depend what's already on this extra room of yours. On ours there is wall paper in a flowery design that matches the carpet. I had briefly thought of painting over the wallpaper because removing it would have been too much work to do right before Christmas. Instead, I just left it as is. What I discovered was after putting up her posters and other wall decorations, not much of the wallpaper shows so it ended up not being a concern in our case.
Organization
Organization is one of the most important parts of a playroom. I've found that as my daughter gets older, her toys become smaller and have a lot of little parts that get easily lost. On top of that, just where do you stack the numerous amounts of puzzles, board games and other boxed toys that seem to multiply seemingly out of nowhere?
Big Storage Items - What I did was to utilize some of the furniture that use to be in my bedroom when I was growing up, so the 2 bookshelves in Courtney's playroom cost me absolutely nothing. I called my little sister (who still lives at home with our mother)and asked her if she was using the 2 bookshelves that are in my old bedroom. My old bedroom has become a storage room for my sister's numerous collections and since neither bookshelf was being used for any specific purpose except to collect dust, I claimed them back. One of the bookshelves has special meaning to me as well as it was my mother's bookshelf when she was small, then it was my older sister's (who is now deceased) and then it was mine. I was thrilled to be able to pass it down to my daughter and after a good cleaning and polishing, it looks absolutely adorable in her playroom. The other bookshelf is one that my husband made for me back when we were dating 14 years ago and also has special meaning for me. This bookshelf now holds all my daughter's Littlest Pet Shop toys and accessories on the top shelf, her Wiggles playset and it's accessories on the middle shelf and on the bottom shelf are her coloring books, magnetic wooden "paper" dolls, and colorforms. My mother's old bookshelf houses my daughter's doll clothes, Mr. Potato Head and all his accessories, bins filled with PVC plastic figurines, bins filled with toy cars, tons of puzzles, and various other toys in bins and shoeboxes.
Where can you find shelves that don't cost a lot of money to add to your child's playroom? A lot of places actually. For starters, check your parent's house. Is your old furniture still sitting in your old bedroom? How about their attic, cellar or storage sheds? Chances are if it's in storage, your parents won't mind you having it as they're obviously not using this furniture themselves. Just mention that it's for their grandchildren and watch them cave right in.
Garage sale season is just starting up now that the weather is warmer and you can always find a variety of furniture for pretty cheap at a lot yard sales. How about your local church's rummage sale or the Goodwill or Salvation Army store in your area? You don't need new furniture in your child's playroom and chances are you probably don't want it. Remember, this is furniture that is going in a room that will house paint, playdoh and all other manner of messy sloppy things.
Now, where do you store those toys that are small but aren't really a part of any particular set? I'm talking about toys obtained from Happy Meals and other kid's meals from fast food restaurants. Toys from cereal boxes, gum ball machines and from J-pegs that are hanging in the grocery store. These I keep in one of those 3 drawer rolling carts that my mother gave to Courtney for Christmas. These cost about 20 dollars and are worth their weight in gold for containing all these little singular toys. If 20 dollars is a bit steep for you then do what I did, ask for one for Christmas or your child's birthday from one of your relatives. Remember, I started putting together my daughter's playroom 2 weeks before Christmas and wasn't willing to spend the money on a rolling cart at the time when 20 bucks would have bought another Christmas gift. Courtney would have had to wait a few weeks before getting one except that my mother latched onto that idea right away and got her one for Christmas. I keep it near her kitchen set and the top drawer is dedicated to play food and pretend utensils as all the storage in her play kitchen is already filled up. The second and third drawers and filled with what I mentioned above.....kid's meal toys, toys from cereal boxes and those other toys that just don't seem to go with anything.
One more big storage item that is a must have for any playroom is a toy box. Courtney has one of those huge Little Tykes ones that she received for her 2nd birthday. That is the one that I moved into her playroom because it held the most toys. She also has a wooden toybox that has a bookshelf attached to it that I bought back when I was pregnant for her. I didn't have room for both toyboxes in her playroom so I elected to keep the one with the bookshelf attached to it in the livingroom because we generally read books to her on the couch so it made the most sense to keep the one that held the books in the room that we read the books in.
Chances are your child already has a toy box but if not you can find them in the same places as you can bookshelves....garage sales, rummage sales and your local thrift store. You will usually find them in great shape too because the toy box is generally used to store toys and not as a toy itself so it usually doesn't get damaged the way toys can (although my daughter will frequently empty her toy box and claim it's her boat).
Smaller Storage Items - Now that we got the big storage items out of the way we can tackle storage for small items. For this I rely heavily upon bins and boxes. I use a variety of bins...heavy weight plastic ones made by Rubbermaid and Sterlite and lighter weight plastic ones like Gladware containers. Many of these containers I already happened to have and had already been using them to store Courtney's smaller toys in. When I found that I needed more, instead of buying an expensive Rubbermaid container, I headed to our local Dollar Store and found myself in storage container heaven! They carry every size and variety that I could ever need and they only cost 1 dollar each. Stored in these plastic bins are her toy cars, PVC plastic figures, doll hair accessories, her magnetic "paper" dolls, various accessories to her Little People playsets if I can't fit them into the item itself (for example you can only fit so much into the Little People Farm). I normally don't use the lids that come with these containers except for her puzzles. She's been into puzzles in a big way and can put together puzzles as high as 50 or 60 count. However, these jigsaw puzzles come in such flimsy boxes and are easily ripped and crushed. When that happens I put the puzzle pieces into one of the smaller Gladware type containers that I bought at the Dollar Store and write the name of the puzzle on the lid. They are the perfect size for this. These plastic containers are also terrific for storing easily damaged electronics, for example I keep my daughter's Powertouch books and cartridges in sturdy plastic containers and I never have to worry about the dog chewing them up or liquid being spilled on them.
I've also utilized empty shoe boxes. Big ones that held my husband's new shoes now hold Courtney's doll clothes. Also for Christmas she received a Mr. Potato Head that came in a suitcase type container that you could store him in with his accessories.....yeah right. Not one of us could fit Mr. Potato Head back into that stupid container. He now resides in one of my husband's empty shoe boxes. She also received a Spongebob Squarepants and an Elmo that are both similar to Mr. Potato Head. Neither one of these came with any way to store any of their accessories so they too are now stored in empty shoeboxes. Shoe boxes also hold her 5sies dolls and the teeny tiny accessories that come with them.
Odds and Ends
Here are a few odds and ends and general ideas that I've stumbled upon that have added to Courtney's playroom tremendously.
Table and Chair Set - Every child needs a place to sit and color, paint, etc... This is where a table and chair set come in handy. You will find that while your child will most likely spend most of his or her time playing on the floor some activities, such as building with blocks require a hard surface and if you have carpeting in your child's playroom, the floor won't work very well. Again, we got lucky with this one. Courtney already had a cute wooden table and chair set in the living room, however, I wanted to keep it there. She generally eats her breakfast and lunch at that table plus does a variety of other things there as well. What I needed was another table and chair set for the playroom. Why I say we got lucky is because my mother and already got her another set and was planning on giving it to her for Christmas. She originally bought it to put in Courtney's bedroom but we put it in her playroom instead. This particular table and chair set is very handy because it has a little cut out in the middle of the table with a lid. Pull the lid off and you have a fabric bag attached so that you can store stuff in it. Very handy and because it's a Wiggles table and chair set, it's also adorable!
My mother found this set at Big Lots for $10.00, so there is another great place to check for children's furniture at remarkably low prices. Other places to check would be the same as bookshelves.....garage sales and thrift stores. Also, don't forget to check with your family and friends. While bookshelves can always be used for other things, a child's table and chair set really can't. Once a child outgrows it then it's really of no use and ends up being put in storage or added to the garage sale pile.
Use All Available Space - I have used all available storage space in my daughter's playroom and have managed to do so without making the room look cluttered. The 2 windows in the room have deep window sills and I've utilized them for toys that have no on/off switch. You know the ones I'm talking about.... the ones that will start playing if another toy so much as touches them and you have no way to turn it off once it starts playing. For some reason, these toys end up being the loudest ones your child has too. You really can't put them in the toy box except for the very very top and even then, they manage to work their way to the bottom somehow and start going off at random intervals. Once they do that they start playing non-stop and you have to empty the whole toy box out so that you can locate said toy and get it away from anything that will make it start playing again. The window sill is where I put these offending toys so that they will behave themselves. Personally, I believe that any toy company that makes electronic toys without volume control and an on/off switch should be taken out back and shot but alas....that's a rant for another day.
I also use the top of Courtney's rolling cart to display her snow globe collection (plastic ones only). The top of her kitchen set has pretend food housed in baskets and her plastic appliances. Even the top of her television set has items on it so as you can see we've left no surface uncovered. If done tastefully and arranged in a cute manner, the room won't look too cluttered and you gain valuable storage space that you might have otherwise overlooked.
Hooks for the Walls - I wanted a cute place to put Courtney's little purses and hats where she could easily reach them. I went out in the garage and searched around and found amongst my husband's tools quite a few white hooks with strong sticky backs. These I placed in groupings of three on 2 of the walls in the playroom. One grouping holds her purses and another holds her hats. Once they were up I discovered to my delight that not only were they functional but they also added to the overall decor. These were free as I found them in our garage but you can buy these in most stores (your local supermarket may even carry them) for super cheap.
Other Wall Decorations - How much junk mail do you get from various children's book clubs wanting you to join? Even though Courtney belongs to 2 book clubs we still get a pile of junk mail from both clubs we belong to in addition to others as well. I use to just chuck these in the garbage but one day I actually read the outside envelope and it said "free poster inside". Out of curiosity I opened it up and sure enough, there was a free Disney Princess poster inside. I kept the poster and threw everything else out. The poster is now hanging on her wall above one of the bookshelves. In another batch of junk mail headed for the trash we found a really cute growth chart which now also hangs in her playroom.
How many times have you got a free children's magazine in the mail? These are sent as previews usually with the magazine company hoping that you'll subscribe once you see how much your child loves the magazine. Don't bother subscribing unless it's something your child truly falls in love with. Instead, carefully rip out pages that would look decorative hanging on your child's playroom walls. You can either put the pictures in frames (look for any extras you may have around the house or check out those yard sales)and make them look like they're expensive pictures you actually bought or just put them on the wall as is in a collage type grouping. Either way, it's a great way to spruce up the walls of your child's playroom with virtually no cost to you.
Has Your Child Taken Over Your TV? - Give them their own so that you can reclaim yours back. How do you do that without it costing you a lot of money? For some people this may be easy to do and for others not so much. In our case, Courtney's playroom use to be our bedroom so we had a cable line already in there. We also had an extra TV just sitting in a closet not being used. I went into our storage room, pulled out a table we weren't using, added it to the playroom in front of the cable line, added the extra TV on top of it and Voila! My daughter now has a TV in her playroom that she can watch whenever she wants and that leaves me able to catch the occasional program on the one in the livingroom. This doesn't always work because she doesn't have a VCR or DVD player in there so if she wants to watch a movie, she has to do so in the livingroom but for the most part, I'm able to catch my favorite Food Network shows, which is all I really ever watch during the day in hopes of finding something new to make for dinner instead of the same old stuff. If you don't have a cable line in the room (or a digital TV box) or extra TV handy, this may not work for you.
Sorting Through the Toys - About 2 weeks before Christmas and 2 weeks before your child's birthday, go through their playroom and sort out all the toys that are broken, are not really being played with anymore or have just been outgrown. Either sell them on eBay, add them to the garage sale pile (both great ways to make some extra money), give them away, or if you plan to have another child, put them in storage to save. Except for the broken toys of course (unless they are easily fixable), just throw those out. Also, go through their coloring books and throw out any that have all the pages colored in (rip out and save any pages that you want to keep as momentos). Go through their crayons and toss out broken ones or ones that have been used so much that they're nothing but little nubs. Go through their books and take out any that have been ripped to shreds or they are just no longer into, such as board books when they are no longer babies. Go through their puzzles and if there are any that are impossible to put together because of too many missing pieces, toss them. In other words, you'll need to make room for all the new toys they are about to receive and this makes a good opportunity to do some downsizing. Do this after they've gone to bed. Trust me on this! Otherwise, a toy that hasn't been played with in almost a year will suddenly become one that they just can't part with if they see you remove it from the playroom. The usual "but Mom, I really really love this toy" fight will ensue and you'll find yourself caving in. Spare your self the agony and temper tantrums and weed through their toys after they are asleep.
This Puzzle Piece Goes with Which Puzzle?? - My daughter is in the habit of emptying out several boxes of puzzles at once. To say that this makes it difficult to put them away at the end of the day is an understatement! I actually found this tip online and love it so much that I'm passing it on. Label the back of each puzzle piece. For example, my daughter has a Dora the Explorer puzzle. I've written in pen "DE" on the back of each puzzle piece. I've then written "DE" on the bottom of the puzzle box. If she has more than one Dora the Explorer puzzle I would label the next one as "DE2" and then the same with the box. This way she can empty out as many puzzles as she wants and I'll always know which piece goes with which box. To get her to help me pick up, I've turned picking up puzzles into a matching game. If you haven't already come across this tip yourself then give it a try!
Crayons Crayons Everywhere - I long ago gave up trying to store Courtney's crayons back in the box they came in. We usually buy her the 96 count box of Crayola crayons. I'm sure everyone here has seen how the bigger boxes of crayons are laid out. There are 6 or 8 smaller flat cardboard holders that you put the crayons in and then the smaller holders all fit back into the big box. Whenever Courtney gets a new box of crayons those smaller cardboard holders have become crushed flat by the end of the day. I started using the bigger Gladware containers to store her crayons in. I believe it is the deep entree size (although I would have to double check to be sure). I just put them all in there and believe me, it's a lot easier picking up her crayons at night if I only have to pile then into a container versus putting them back in their box one by one. I've also found that this size container holds colored pencils as well. This way you can keep all your child's crayons together, such as ones that might come with a holiday coloring book (I think there are usually 4 attached to the front). Before throwing out the bigger box be sure and take out the crayon sharpener that comes on some of these.
End of Holiday Bargains - If you want some storage ideas that are cuter than shoeboxes or clear plastic containers then don't forget about the end of holiday sales in your area. By holiday I'm not really talking about Christmas although it's not totally excluded. I'm mostly talking about Easter clearance items and summer clearance items. At the end of summer you will find all children's outdoor toys marked down to practically nothing. This would be an excellent time to pick up some pails and buckets (look for the sandbox toys) that are cute and colorful. These could hold all kinds of items in your child's playroom from cars and blocks to crayons and markers.
You can find all kinds of baskets while shopping in the Easter clearance aisle. Big baskets all the way down to small ones which could be used for all kinds of storage solutions. Check all clearance sales at the end of each season and holiday because you never know what you'll find.
Another idea would be tins. Have you ever been given candy that has come in an attractive tin? Use that tin in your child's playroom to hold smaller items. Courtney has a really cute 6 sided tin that use to hold a variety of Willy Wonka hard candy in it. It's bright and colorful and actually quite large. At the end of a "candy holiday" (Halloween, Christmas, Easter, and Valentines Day) you can find candy marked down 50 to 75 percent off. If it comes in a cute tin, buy it, eat the candy and add the tin to your child's playroom for storage.
Overall
I was drowning in my daughter's toys. The livingroom and diningroom was just stuffed with them. I knew I was going to have a hard time trying to find a spot for the Christmas tree and was so glad when my husband moved our bedroom upstairs after we finally got the new carpeting installed up there. The timing was just perfect because I had no idea where I was going to put all the new toys Courtney would be getting for Christmas on top of the toys she already had. It was a lot of work with Christmas just 2 weeks away but so worth it. I just stood there the day the room was finally done and kept looking it. I had pegged that room as Courtney's playroom the day we moved into our house and was finally glad to see that after 4 years it became a reality.
Trust me when I say that I've looked at all kinds of pictures of other playrooms and the amount of money these parents have paid to create these rooms was just inexcusable. I've seen some where professional artists have painted murals on the walls for a thousand dollars. I sat there trying to imagine the looks on the parent's faces when their precious children drew all over the adorable expensive murals with permanent marker. I've seen playrooms with beautiful expensive rugs that match every accessory in the room. Again I've imagined the looks on the parent's faces when their child barfs Spaghetti-Os all over that horribly expensive rug.
The fact of the matter is that these parents are living in a fairy tale. Sure, you can spend thousands of dollars creating the most beautiful playroom that the world has ever seen but you then you wouldn't dare let your child actually play in it. Kids are messy. The spill their food and beverages several times a day. They have accidents and will pee and poop their pants on occasion. They get sick and will puke right where they're standing. They get into things when you're not looking, (I mean, how dare we actually go to the bathroom....) like permanent marker and nail polish, which they think will look just great on the furniture. The list just goes on and on. If you have more than 1 child then double or triple the above list.
However, you can create an adorable playroom without spending a lot of money. This is what I set out do and hopefully I've been able to pass along some of the things I've learned. I'm always finding ways to improve upon the room without spending much money so if anyone reading this has any hints or tips that I haven't come across yet please feel free to add them!
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Member: Cherie
Location: central NY
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About Me:
I love being a stay at home mom to my 2 beautiful little girls.
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