You limit the amount of toy clutter. Second, you avoid toys that are just super obnoxious. You can also repaint furniture to match or gel more with your adult colors.

Where can we get those awesome chairs!

Thank you for featuring my spaces :-)

Toys end up scattered throughout the house because little ones don't like to be too far from adults. A playroom is more useful when kids are a bit older and don't need to see you every moment. Those chairs are amazing, do they come in adult size too?

There's always boarding school.

Okay, not funny, but for years, I wondered why a rather tony west-coast shelter magazine had so many ads in the back for schools that specialized in "troubled" or "rebellious" kids--what was it about the mag's readership that led to them having bratty offspring? Eventually realized that those kids were being shipped out, not because they were worse than other kids, but because the mag tended to attract the sort of parents who would (and could afford to) banish them for not being "trophy" kids. Basically, the kids didn't go with the curtains.

Thanks for posting this. The photos are lovely. Our house is small and there is no room for a dedicated toy room, but with a 2 1/2 year old and a newborn, I like to have my toddler where I can hear and see him play. Our living room has a very small wooden play kitchen in it and I get comments all the time about how cute it looks in the living room. All other toys and books are contained in baskets and behind cupboards throughout the house. I also agree that you must limit the clutter and avoid buying large, obnoxious toys that stand out in your space. We've made this a priority and have not missed all the garish plastic items, and neither has my son.

Ah, upstategirl, but how do you get grandparents to stop buying garish plastic items? This is my problem.

eq, we had the same problem and just had to be direct in asking that they limit the gifts. We didn't get into the "garish plastic" criticism, we made it more about how my son is so lucky to have such a generous family, and therefore we have no space for more stuff. They got the message and usually talk to us first if they see something they want to give him.

Like some of the previous posters, we made every room have some kid-friendly space. I started out with the idea that we'd restrict all that to the family room, but it's actually more comfortable for all of us that we can play anywhere and there's always a nearby place to put things away.

One way might be to tell relatives that you're wanting to be committed to the environment and wanting to teach your children this as well, so if they must get you gifts, you'd prefer simple/durable/practical items. We've found that our well-meaning relative who loooves to buy gifts (and previously sent us huge packages of ridiculously overly wrapped kitschy stuff) has glommed right onto this and now loves to search high and low to find something that fits into our ideals around minimalism. People generally want to please other people, and usually love guidelines as long as they're well-intended and not obnoxious.

You could also tell your relatives that you've decided that Waldorf or another minimalist philosophy is right for your family, and ask that they respect your limits around what you do and don't allow your kid to have. You can point out, if it's the case, that you're noticing that your child is becoming a bit squirrelly and distracted what with all the overstimulation in today's world, or is becoming obsessed with buying branded junk from TV, or whatever the case might be, and that you've decided to do away with TV-character toys, noise-making toys, battery-operated toys, etc.

We totally have a midcentury modern cabinet that we can just stow our children in at night or when we get tired of them. We picked it up at a tag sale, and I think it has really nice lines. We slapped a coat of Robin's Egg Blue eco-friendly paint on it so the kids love it too. Of course we let them out when we have artisanal food to feed them, trendy crafts for them to do, or photo opps for my design blog.

I agree with many of the commenters that said that you make an effort not to purchase garish plastic beasts of toys. With that said though, I have a sixteen month old son and my parents live down the street, so we get a lot of giant plastic toys! However, we have a big house, so instead of trying to limit them all to one room to horrify someone when they walk into said room, I break them up all over the house similar to the post, and give them their own little places. And yes, I do pick favorites. I have certainly purchased toys because they would look really cool in our living room! What parent doesn't live a little through their kid? :)

Shannon
www.11thandshannon.com

Lovely spaces shown above, so sweet. Like other commenters said, grandparents are the main source of obnoxious toys in our house. We've been firm, clear, kind, and consistent, but some of them just won't listen. We've taken to donating the unwanted items to Goodwill or the local Children's Hospital. Our 100 year old house doesn't have much storage, or a play room, or even a family room--just a living room and dining room, so that's where we spend our time, and that's where all toys live.

My aesthetic is bright and colorful with a little bit of whimsy/silliness, so it hasn't been too hard to incorporate my kids' stuff into that, but we live in a small house (800 sq. ft. for the three of us) so the biggest challenge has been not letting the toys take over. I rely most heavily on storage furniture (we have two expedit bookcases laying horizontally with bins in the bottom rows that hold all the piece-y toys; our coffee table is a trunk that holds our games, etc.), and I also try to incorporate some of their more interesting/fun/visually pleasing toys into the decor, on shelves and such. One effect I didn't expect was that, as long as they're within reach, adults will actually play with the toys too! I love that!

Oh, and I am ruthless with the grandparent toys. My kids seem to have the same grandparents as all the other commenters and at first I felt sooo guilty about getting rid of stuff but once I made the leap I realized that no one, not the grandparents and not my kids, even noticed!

@eq: Both of our parents are pretty good about staying away from the crazy plastic stuff since they know us and see the kinds of things we buy for our son. We have a harder time with other people whose gifts, although extremely generous and well meaning, are almost always gigantic, plastic, and noisy. On occasion we've taken them back to the store, of course, unless my son objects because he loves it. If he loves it, and plays with it, we keep it. We certainly have our share of plastic items, but the older he gets the more he's not interested in that kind of stuff. He's never been interested in the battery operated, large items. Think crazy ball popper!