OP here. This is helpful, thanks. Unfortunately we can't really add a door as it would break up the openness of the house and look weird when you walk in. Since I'm looking at this as a semi-short-term (couple of years) solution, I don't want to do anything permanent or expensive. I think I will start by moving some stuff over to the other room and seeing if the kids catch on and play there, or if they still seem attached to the family room.

If you can shut the door, a playroom is not a bad idea.

We have a cape cod with 2BR downstairs, and they are both technically guest rooms, but one of them also houses the bulk of my daughter's toys. Before, they were all in the family room and I was going a bit nuts from the clutter. Now, she has shelves with bins of toys and dolls and she can grab a bin and play there or bring it into the family room. There's also a rolling rack that holds all of her princess dresses, etc. If it's messy, we just close the door.

Kids that age and older want to play near their parents/caregivers. Find storage as a PP suggested for the family room and be cool with that for a few years until they want to be more separated. Find a door for the front room and use it for YOU.

My sister made her formal living room a playroom and it works great for their lives right now. I'm sure when the kids are a little older, she'll change it back into a formal living room. Do whatever works best for your lifestyle. It's not a permanent change to the house.

We have a house with an odd layout that is a function of several additions by previous owners. We don't have a basement. We use one small (8x10ish) room off our front entrance exactly as you describe --- we call it the playroom but truthfully the kids only play there about 10-15 percent of the time. Still, it holds all their toys and enables us to begin and end each day without having to look at the plastic horrors. My kids are 4yo and 9yo by the way, and the plastic continues only in different forms (legos, superheros, etc.) I keep waiting for the day when it will become their video game room, but that hasn't happened yet. BTW, we have a sofa, a wide but skinny bookshelf (lower shelves hold big trucks), and a lot of Ikea storage furniture to corrall the toys, including the ubiquitous Expedit. We also have some pieces from their Stuva line which I love because they have drawers and you can mix tall cabinets with lower ones that function as playtables.

Add a door, problem solved.

Anonymous wrote:I would try and do an "upscale" version of a mudroom.

http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/make-an-entrance-organized-mud-164335

These are good ideas. Also, something to think about for the future, e.g., after school activities, sports.

If you can see your family room from the kitchen and the kids can play safely there, I wouldn't make a huge concerted effort to relocate toys. I would take a look at the floor plan b/f investing in any expensive furnishings, to see what would make sense in terms of knocking out a wall. (It could always be made smaller and just be a foyer or the wall taken out completely. Depends on what you need.)

I bet they just carry the toys over to the family room. Just get better storage in that room.

You're the one who has to live in the house day in and day out. Use the room as it suits your family.

I would turn it into a playroom. Having all the toys in just one room, is the best option. Make sure you organize the room. If it means putting up shelves and baskets, then do it. As long as you make it attractive and organized, it will work. Kids will always play there, even as teenagers, when you convert it to a game room with all their electronics.

Anonymous wrote:I think that segregating the toys from the large family room into the small odd room is the opposite of letting the kid stuff take over your lives. You're making a limited, designated area for it. I'm all in favor.

Agreed. And it's just for the next ~2 years until your kids are old enough for the basement playroom to work, at which point you can 'reclaim' that front space for a more dignified function. But for now it seems to make sense to give up the impression on first walking in to keep the family room less toy-explosion. Think about it from a selfish POV - where do *you* spend more time. Walking into your house or in the kitchen looking at your family room.

I'd use it as a sitting room/library. It's too prominent for a playroom IMO. Unless you have beautiful toys made out of all natural materials. A room full of plastic is an eye sore.

I would try and do an "upscale" version of a mudroom.

http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/make-an-entrance-organized-mud-164335

I think that segregating the toys from the large family room into the small odd room is the opposite of letting the kid stuff take over your lives. You're making a limited, designated area for it. I'm all in favor.

We just bought a house that was expanded recently and has kind of an unusual setup. When you first walk in, there is a small room to your left and another one to your right. The one on the right is clearly an office and has doors that close it off. The one on the left leads to the kitchen. It was staged as a formal dining room but really it is too small to fit more than a 4-6 person table. Beyond the two small rooms is a large, mostly open family room and dining area. There's no formal living or dining room.

We have a great basement playroom, but our kids (3 and 1) are too little to play down there independently, so most of the time if I am cooking or doing anything on the main floor, they end up playing in our family room. As a result, there are a bunch of toys cluttering up the family room. It is a pretty large room though, so it's not awful. We are thinking of making the left front room into another play/toy storage area. It is open to the kitchen and visible from the family room, so I think they are likely to use it. We haven't had much in there since we moved in but would probably end up just furnishinh it as a small sitting room. One day we'd love to expand the kitchen into it but that's years away.

The only thing I don't like about this plan is that the room is basically the first thing you see when you walk into the house. We are pretty strict about picking up toys so it wouldn't necessarily be messy, but it certainly wouldn't look elegant. These kids already have an awesome playroom in the basement, plus toys in their bedrooms, and for some reason this just feels like overkill. DH and I always said we weren't going to be those people who let kid stuff take over their lives. On the other hand, this would get the kid stuff out of the family room, which we actually use, and into a room that has no other purpose.

What should we do?