Hate my front room :(

[NicoleW]

Pretty pointless thread but hey ho.

I really hate my front room, I don't have a dining room or a conservatory. We were about to put an offer in on a rented house that had both a dining room and a conservatory but an old bill popped up out of the woodwork for £750 so had to pay that today which means it's gonna be longer before we can move and that house will more than likely be gone

It has wooden flooring so quite noisy and can't have a rug because it attracts dog hair like nobodys business eventhough the dogs aren't allowed in the front room!


I don't have a place to 'relax' as my front room looks like a nursery, and yeah somedays I like it but after a hard day (like today!) I want to have a grown up front room, with candles... ornamental stones... Wallmounted TV just because I think it looks better lol.


Like I said pointless thread.. Just feeling a bit.. Down..

[Velleity]

Same here!
My whole home looks like a nursery school.
I don't actually have anywhere to put things away at the end of a day.
I don't even have a bedroom at the moment.
2 bedroom house and the children have a room each...

Moan over

[The Juggler]

aww honey, I'm the same some days but.... look on the bright side, if you had a carpet it'd be filthy by now with minding . keep some huge plastic boxes crates and chuck everything in it at the end of the day put in teh corner (stacked maybe) and maybe just chuck a throw over it so you can't see it

No reason you can't have your ornamental stones and candles, I have them, on my mantlepiece, by the fire, babies just have to learn not to touch

sorry you lost out on the new house though honey

[NicoleW]

If I thought my OH would go for it I'd turn our bedroom into a front room and use our current front room as a play room!

But he won't lol

[Suebb1]

My own children are married and left home but still my house is full of childminding stuff!!! I have a playroom but it over spills everyowhere. Agree get some big stacker boxes throw everything in at night and put a bright cloth over. There will be other houses that will come up xx

[Mollymop]

My living room is the same. I don't have a conservatory or a dining room. It is quite large so I can dedicate areas to toy storage, etc, toys go away in an understairs cupboard at the end of the day but I would so love to have a living room just for me and my family

[rickysmiths]

Oh dear. There is no need for it to look like a nursery. I minded using my sitting room until last year so for 16 years. It never looked like a nursery because it was my sitting room and my home. Ofsted do not expect this of you either. Do you have somewhere away from the room to store your resources? When we lived in our flat and when we moved to this house I have a shed in the garden. The majority of my stuff was boxed up and in there. I then rotated things as needed.

One wall of my sitting room was book shelves, we are a big book family, so I had the bottom two shelves to put boxes on and they were mostly hidden at the weekend by the sofa that sat in front of the shelves. Everything else was put away and it became our sitting room again. I put childrens work in plastic pockets over the door, they could then be removed easily and blu tacked to a cupboard door in the hall just outside the sitting room. Again easily removed if I wanted to. Ofsted poster and reg cert are on a cork board which is taken down if I want to and a picture is put up instead.

You live and work in your home and that is what it should stay. You certainly should not feel you have to change it so much for cm that you don't enjoy it yourself.

It is lovely to have a playroom and I am lucky to have one but it is still a family room when i'm not working, so although I have Billy bookcases on one wall and a trofast on the other I still put display stuff on the doors and windows so they can be taken down easily and I have two classic framed Margaret Tarrant picutres and a clock on the walls and that is all. I can very easily make the room a home room and even though I am luck enough to have it it is not made to look like a nursery but more like a second sitting room.

[NicoleW]

Is my front room (The pics on the red paper are of my own )


I have a shed to store toys, but it's not well kept and bits of planks of wood are missing.

The only place I store them is upstairs in the girls bedrooms. So at the end of the day the toys just gets put away around the walls of the front room.

I'm thinking of ordering a couple of those plastic wallet holders, and just put children's art work in there etc and my certificate which I can then easily take down at night.

[FussyElmo]

No wonder it is getting to you. Im sitting in my living room now and if you came in the back way I dont think you would know I had children neither mind childminded. Yes I know Im lucky to have a dining room to store everything in but I think if it is depressing you - change it.

I always look at it and think parents chose me for an home enviroment and I doubt any of your parents front room look like that.

If you have to store your toys in there I would buy the wicker baskets so its more homely. Also look at fixing your shed so you cant store the majority of the stuff in there

[rickysmiths]

And take down all those posters especially the big EYFS one. Who really looks at them? As suggested invest in some wicker baskets and reduce what you have on offer each day. In my experience the more you have out the less it is played with the more it is scattered over the floor.

My dh would have gone made if our living room had ever looked loke that no wonder you can relax in it. Change it!

Just noticed your cert and parents poster on the wall. Invest in a small cork board and hang it behind the front door or on a hook where you can replace it with a lovely painting or photograph of your family when you aren't working.

[The Juggler]

hon, i recommedn the ikea unit not the trofast bu tthe expedit. you can store your family stuff in it and it looks very grown up and non-minding and then you can get boxes to store toys in and it slides in and is hidden away.

i don't have ANY posters in my lounge, they are all in teh kitchen and my display boards and some out by the back door bu the loung is sacred to posters. only pics in there are those of my family in frames.

[Mouse]

Oh bimey, I can understand why you don't like it as a sitting room

For a start, I would take all those posters down. They might look nice, but do the children ever look at them?

Research shows that children respond & play better in calmer, uncluttered spaces. Plain walls are best as they don't distract the children's attention from what they are playing with.

I'd then change the storage for something that looks like it could be in a sitting room. Put everything in baskets, or pretty boxes on shelves. The children can help themselves, but you're not faced with lots of toys on view when you're now working.

As for rugs, what about some small rugs dotted around that you could put through the washing machine? I have several different coloured Ikea bath mats. They're nice & bright, but easy to pick up and put away. I put them on the floor & set toys out on them.

[doodles]

Oh my goodness, I dont have any posters up in my living room! It would drive me mad, you could just get them out when children were learning about the different subjects ie animals..
I have a few ornaments in here, vase of fresh flowers etc.. The children just learn not to touch them. x

[georgie456]

I agree with the others - those posters need to be gone! That would drive me insane. The children don't need all that gumph on your walls and Ofsted certainly do not expect it.

I live in a teeny 2 bed house with just a living room (and a weeny kitchen!) Thankfully I have an understairs cupboard which can't be seen from the rest of the living room which I can hide bits in and I have those photo pocket things on the door with pics of the kids and a daily calendar and self-register. All my certificates are in the hall. We are over run with toys which drive me mad, but I have a 7yr old and a 3yr old of my own so we would have the toys anyway.

I came round a way of displaying bits when I bought a big wooden playhouse last year with a childminding grant from my council. It meant we had to lose our garden shed (yes, I have a small garden as well as a small house!) but we use that as our display area - that way it's down the end of the garden and the kids spend hours in there looking at all their bits and bobs that they have created!

We tried to sell our house last year when the PERFECT house came on the market - huge playroom etc etc - unfortunately we chose the worse time in the history of the universe to try and sell a house and gave up after a year - one day maybe *sigh*

I invested in the Expedit range from Ikea - the boxes look very grown up and you wouldn't believe how much you put in them. Plus they are very reasonable price wise.

But, in the meantime, know you are not alone. I feel your pain. x

[Helen79]

I don't have any cm'ing stuff in my living even though it's our playroom when I'm working. We're in a small 2 bed flat and it can look cluttered quite quickly so I've got 1 cupboard in the kids bedroom that all the cm'ing stuff gets stored at the end of the day. If it doesn't fit in the cupboard then I've got too much stuff and I have a clearout.

Maybe have a look at all your toys and see ifyou can get rid of any or swap for something smaller and easier to store. The table piano thing that lights up, you could maybe just get a small 5pound keyboard from argos that would do instead. The box toy with the threading on top could be replaced with a threading toy that's smaller.

I won't have posters on my walls either, I take the kids to enough places where they do get to see those kind of things, library, toddler groups etc so don't think it's necessary to have them up here aswell.

[Tatjana]

I don't have any posters up and the only artwork that is up is my childrens own, mindees artwork/crafts/activity bits go home with them or some is put in their learning journals.

I have a white 2 x 4 expedit ikea unit with black boxes, alot of people have commented on how nice it looks, it houses ALOT of toys in there and apart from a few bigger bits, like shopping trolley and ride on there's no other stuff lying around.

My home will always look like the home I/we want...there's no way I'll have it looking like a nursery as it would drive me insane!!! I offer a home from home environment, if parents want a nursery they can go to one lol!!

[Bluebell]

The small washable rugs is a really good idea and also what about the foam letters that you jigsaw together for a large floor area?
I got the ELC alphabet - they're quite brightly coloured but they are nicer for kids to play on than my wooden floor and reduces noise. They wipe clean and at the end of the day if you want to put them away we just split them into big squares and slide them under the sofa!
I used to have 1 area of my living room as a play area and toys went away in boxes or on shelves so not too intrusive but since also creating a quiet corner with a book stand and a canopy it does seem to spread across the whole place! I have pictures the kids drew on 1 small area above the kitchen table but I had this anyway for my own kids work. I have the required posters/certificate on the space behind where my door opens. Its a glass door but I have to remember to shut it if I'm getting inspected!
I have young kids myself so I don't mind some toys downstairs. The only time we pretty much cleared the whole room and put away all the boxes stacked into a cupboard under the stairs was at Christmas.
I don't have a lot of storage space apart from upstairs so I do rotate toys but keep the main ones downstairs for ease of access!

[janminder]

I am the same Nicole no dining room or conservatory so its all in the sitting room, though I keep the displays and toy shelving unit to one side in an alcove so the main square of the sittting room seems free in evening/weekends if you dont look that way. Also lucky to have a largish under stairs cupboard which has 10 large see through plastic boxes, real and play highchair, pop up play tents and tunnels, easel, large plastic trays and some other bits. I have most of my posters in the hallway.

Was going to put on some pics but cant get it to work or more to the point I dont think I know what I am doing lol

[Demonjill]

Can I just say Nicole - your floor is gorgeous!

Def sort out those posters that in itself will make a huge difference.

My living room is where we do most of our play and then it still looks like a living room - just with some toys out

We do arts n crafts at the kitchen table but its not huge.

I have magnetic display board in kitchen for pictures but only keep drawings for few days then they get filed

All my stuff is stored away in cupboard under the stairs at end of most days

[watgem]

Mine is the same as Nicoles apart from the posters and my family are constantly moaning about it lol, so I can really sympathise, but don't know what to suggest really, apart from try the suggestions and use the ones that work for you and your situation. I would really love to keep toys etc in the shed, but unfortunately all the little country mice hide in there as well as bugs, so we have to put up with it