Thriving in a Small Space- TOYS, TOYS, TOYS

Disclaimer: This is not my house

TOYS!

If you live in a small space with children, toys can take over your whole space.  Toys over run your home like a plague of locusts.

It wasn't terrible with one child and a 1,000 square foot two bedroom townhouse.  We were able to contain the insanity in her bedroom.  When Lucas was born we began to lose control.  By time Ella came along, the living room was packed!  You had to climb the Mount Everest of toys and baby gadgets to get out the front door. 

Instead giving the children climbing gear and a sherpa, we decided to contain the toys in another space instead of the living room.

Where could the toys go?  

We only have two bedrooms.  Aaron and I are in the smaller of the two bedrooms, so the kids have the larger bedroom.  One would think that the toys could go in there.  With three dressers, 2 cribs and a bed, their bedroom is full!

Downstairs we had a living room, dining room, 1/2 bath and kitchen.  I wanted the toys out of the living room so that left the other three rooms.  The kitchen and 1/2 bath were not going to work so that left the dining room.

We didn't need a formal dining room anymore.  Our kitchen was big enough to fit a table with enough room for three chairs and two high chairs.  We spent most of our time eating in there.   

I didn't want to get rid of my dining room table, 6 chairs and china cabinet.  I liked them and thought that if we ever moved to a full sized house that we would need them. We looked into renting a storage unit and keeping them there until we needed them.  That was too costly of an option.

So Aaron came up with the solution.  He decided to close off the opening between the living room and dining room.  This gave us another wall in the living room to put the couch against.  This freed up the space in the front bay window area.  We were able to squeeze my dining room furniture there.  So now our living room is a living/dining room combo.  It works for us!

This is the living room with the couch in front of the wall that used to be the
 opening to the dining room.  The white trim frames out the area that was open.
Aaron made the new wall temporary so that when we try to sell this house,
 it will be easy to convert it back to the original design.

This is our new dining area in the front window of our living room.

The dining room was now closed off with only one entrance to it through the kitchen.  Since we are an end unit, we have a nice sized window in the room.  Aaron built closets against the back wall for storage.

  Welcome to our new playroom!  

The white trim shows the outline of where the opening to the living room used to be.

Here is the window we have since we are an end unit.  You can also see the chair rail
 that is still there from  when it was a dining room.

It was exactly what we needed to thrive in this small space together with all of the toys!  It is a safe place for the babies to play and their toys are no longer under foot.  They love it!