Playroom Make Over Take 1

When we moved into our new house, all the boys toys ended up dumped in what was to be their playroom. The shelves stayed where the removalists' had unloaded them and we stacked the toys away accordingly. It really was not a pretty picture, nor a practical one. The playroom is long and skinny and everything ended up stacked on the sides diminishing the width further and reducing the play area significantly. Toys usually ended up everywhere on the floor, leaving no room for the boys to stand or sit, let alone play. Also with only low lying shelves, there was nowhere to put precious items out of reach of our 2 year old "destructo baby" (as his brother calls him). And nowhere to put pencils and crayons out of reach of either of the boys, leading to some wall drawing just weeks after completing our full house repaint!

I needed some solutions to combat this clutter! So began my Pinterest mission to find playroom storage solutions that were attractive, functional and didn't break the bank (the kitchen renovation had already done that!).

We decided on some floating shelves for the "unreachables" we wanted to keep away from "destructo". We found these at Bunnings for $18.90 each and they function well to keep items visually available in the playroom so that my elder boy can ask to play with them when he wants, but out of reach of those little destructive and mischievous hands. They also display some of the art work we have for the playroom.

Next I wanted to de-clutter the red retro play kitchen Noah was given by Santa a couple of years ago. It has always been so jam-packed with food, saucepans, crockery and cutlery that the kids have struggled to use the kitchen itself as anything more than a pantry. I saw this pin, using an old plate shelf to store some of these items for a play kitchen and thought that would be a great solution. But the only plate shelves I could find were in the vicinity of $80-$100. However, IKEA sells spice racks for $2.49, and I have seen many pins using these in kids play spaces. Even better, a quick coat of paint and the spice racks are customized to your decor.

Commence operation find and decorate spice racks:
It took 2 trips to IKEA to purchase them - apparently spice racks at $2.49 are hot items at IKEA.
A trip to the hardware for a can of spray paint.
A quick undercoat (just what we had left over from our house repainting)
A coat of spray paint and we had beautiful glossy shelves ready for installation.
A late night hammer and drill session (I am sure our neighbours hate us)

Voila! Cute retro red spice rack/shelving for the play kitchen. We also removed the door to the playroom (it just took up space and was never closed anyway because there were too many toys stacked up in front of it), moved the kitchen to where the door previously was, and moved the heavy Expedit IKEA shelves to the back wall to open up the play space a little more.

We added a couple of IKEA Grundtal rails ($4.99), some Bygel Containers ($1.99) and hooks ($1.49)  under the spice shelves to hang the pots and pans off (apparently this is a design feature my husband is disappointed did not make it into our own kitchen renovation) and collect the cutlery.

The verdict?
We have some happy little chefs cooking up a storm in their new space. And for $37.36 we have avoided breaking the bank with this kitchen renovation!

We still have a couple of new book shelves and magnet boards to put up in the playroom to help further with the decluttering and organization. Hopefully that happens over the coming weekend.