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Children. Have Special Play Areas in the House

Children have a special way of just taking over your house, your life, and everything that you do. If you are looking to increase your own time, increase your own space in your home and to control where your children’s toys land you should consider investing a little space in your home to be a playroom for your children. If you have the extra space you are going to love what you can do with a room, even if it is just a small room so that your children will have a space of their own for their own things and you are going to have more control over the rest of your home!

If you have a spare bedroom, an extra living room, a room in the basement (usually finished or at least carpeted) or you can use an enclosed porch as an area for the children to play and store their extra toys. Toys that are taken all through the house can be unsightly, hazardous, if you have elderly people living in the house, and sometimes toys all through the house will just make your house seem more cluttered.

How will you start out making this room a playroom? First, you need to strip the room of all the adult things like the frilly curtains, possibly the hanging light fixture, the china cabinet or any other furniture that you don’t want the children climbing on, coloring on or just plain out ruining anything that might be in the playroom. For example, if you are going to leave a small bed in the playroom for rest or for lying on when they want to watch television, you might not want to leave your grandmothers quilt on the bed, but something more appropriate for children, and all the things that they will do!

After you have taken out all the special adult things that you cherish or that you don’t want the children to possibly ruin or take over, it is time to think about what age of children will be using this room. If you have very small children you may need to baby proof the room thinking about things such as: the plugs on the wall (which should be plugged with baby proofing plastics), those hanging cords from the blinds (which should always be taped or hidden high away from little hands). You need to think about the cords from televisions and vcrs, dvds as they should be taped securely to the back of the entertainment center or the television so there is no chance of this appliance falling over on the child.

If there are windows that are very high from the ground, you should make sure that you have measures in place that the children can’t open the window and crawl out. If you have windows on the ground floor, you want to make sure someone can’t crawl in and take your children if you live in town.  Along this same line in worrying about windows, place a tot finder sticker or sign on the window, in case of fire, so that firemen could find children if they were trapped in the playroom. Doors should have a lock towards the very top of the door that the children can’t reach to let strangers in, but at the same time, you need to be able to open this door from the outside, if you must with a key, in case you would have to get in for an emergency.

What else do you need to do to make this a real playroom? You will need to add pictures on the wall that are meant for children, fun things, like stuff that they color, pictures of their various ages, and family photos. You can hang a special bulletin board for the children to hang their own things with tape if you like, and you can make a special area where they can play with crayons or chalk if you like.

In most all home centers you can find runners, rugs or area rugs that are meant for children as well with building blocks, trucks, flowers, babies, and Barbie’s or even balloons – making this room feel like a children’s room and so much more. You can move all the toys to this room, putting large toy boxes or shelving up so that all of their toys have space for things to be put away when they are finished playing but at the same time, not all these toys will be in your family living room! Have fun creating and decorating your new playroom and enjoy your clean house for years to come!