So, our new place in Cheyenne has great space, but it is two levels. The main floors has the kitchen, dining room, living room, half bath and entry and upstairs is the three bedrooms, two bathrooms and the laundry room.
I have never lived in a two-story house before.
With a 2.5 year old and a 5 month old, do you recommend dedicating some of the living room to toys? Having special "downstairs" toys and then others that Easton can go upstairs to play with? Just leaving all toys upstairs?
I'm just trying to minimize the amount of toy-carrying I'll be doing daily, since Easton can only carry certain things up and down stairs and I'm not super comfortable with him upstairs by himself for extended periods of time.
Your help is appreciated!
7 comments:
I have done all of the above...each has their own pros and cons...
But I think I've settled on having a nice toy box downstairs in an inconspicuous place (ours is against a wall in our living room, between the couch and a coat closet). I keep a few bins of toys (maybe 1 bin cars, 1 bin legos, plus five or six bigger toys...trucks, diggers, etc). Then, if Ian gets tired of something, we switch it out for something else.
(We keep the majority of toys in his room).
We are living on two levels right now. There are some nice things about it and some not so nice...like the dilemma you are questioning. This is what has worked for us. I put the toys down here that the kids need help playing with or like to show me when they're done i.e legos, blocks, lincoln logs etc (this does mean we have to be careful with a now mobile baby who likes to put everything in his mouth). Then upstairs I put the toys where I can feel safe sending them up to play for a while by themselves so I can get some cleaning done down stairs.
One thing I like about this set up, is that even switching the toys from one level to another brings a whole new interest to it. The kids get so excited to play with their toys in a new location.
Hope this helps if not, pretend I never said anything :)
I like splitting it but keeping the toys downstairs to one box of toys, one of books so it doesn't take over the living room. I have found having toys downstairs is a must because I don't want Andrew upstairs while Camille is napping waking her up.
just don't have toys...that's what I do :)
acutally, Our new house has the same floor plan, and I am planning on having an armoir in a corner that has the bottom shelf dedicated to things like story books and a few toys.
For the most part though, if my kiddos want to play with toys, they will be in their rooms or outside!
I agree with the other posters. We lived in a 2 story in Omaha. Most of the toys were upstairs, but I had a cupboard with some books and art stuff downstairs. I had games downstairs in a kitchen cabinet. I also had our toy kitchen and dishes in the real kitchen. When Char and IZ were babies, the baby toys were mostly downstairs. It was nice to have upstairs toys and downstairs toys, most of the time. Good luck. No matter what you decide, there's going to be a downside or two. :)
My house is four levels! I feel like I'm somewhat of an expert on this subject. Ha ha!
Kids like to be where the "action" is so if YOU spend most of your time downstairs, that's where THEY will want to be. I keep baskets for toys in my family room and living room, but I don't specify which toys go in them. When I clean, whatever toys have been dragged in that room go in that room's basket. That way I'm not running up and down stairs all the time trying to return toys to their proper floors (the exception is when the toys are too big for the baskets. Those toys all return to the play room).
Oh I am so glad you found a place! I love our townhouse! I thought we would play more upstairs, but we just don't. I rotate toys that I keep upstairs for what toys are downstairs, but it is just easier to play downstairs. Plus I don't know if you have 2 separate ac units. We try not to keep the upstairs as cool as the downstairs during the day to save money. Good luck with packing and moving. I can't wait to see picts of your new place!
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