When we’re choosing and establishing our home for our family, we’re taking care mostly about its functionality. Of course, there is some aesthetics and design involved, but primarily we’re trying to make it accommodate the basic needs of every family – place to sleep, a place to eat, a place to rest, and place to hang out with your friends and family. But all these things slowly become a routine and it just hits you one day that you’re not having any fun anymore. And it’s not about you, but about the lack of space to do it. Every room has its ‛function’ which makes them occupied with ‛serious stuff’. But the truth is that you can easily adapt any space for various kinds of fun activities, without ruining its primary purpose. Here are some tips how to turn your home into a fun playground for every member of your family.
From meeting place to adventure place (and another way around)
Your living room is probably the only place that guarantees that you will have fun from time to time because it’s the place where you welcome your guests. The recipe is pretty simple – furniture placed in circular or semi-circular position for conversations, a table, some kind of music player and that’s it. But this meeting place is fun for grownups only, kids are not such big fans of late night chats about sport and politics. Why should you care, right? The biggest part of your budget went right in their room to make it look like a space shuttle. You designed their room for fun, so they should just stay put and play. But you need to understand that all the kids are a kind of explorers (the younger the more curious). They don’t want to stay put and you can’t ‛lock them up’ even if you buy them all the toys in this world. You should be proud of this fact and not only allow them to explore but encourage them to do it.
The problem is in the fact that usually, the ‛goal of their expedition’ is the place grownups occupy the most – the living room. When you think about it, it’s still the best option because you’re definitely not gonna let them ‛mess around’ in the kitchen (mom is gonna have a heart attack) or in the bedroom, where everything’s arranged perfectly for a well-deserved rest in the end of the day. But the living room is the place with the largest number of furniture, chairs, tables, etc. and all those things need to stay there for the guests. You can’t just throw them out and let your children bring their ‛stuff’. What are you going to say – please, come in and make yourself comfortable on one of the toys? The trick is not to look at this change as a road without return. You don’t have to throw all the furniture out, you can simply turn it into a playground for your kids where they won’t need many toys. The simplest way to do that is to rearrange the furniture, add a couple of blankets and build them a large tent. What is better for these young investigators from some ‛secret underground tunnel’? And when their investigation is over you can move everything back where it was in no more than 15 minutes, right on time for a late night chat with friends.
Dreamy workout
Okay, now it’s time for your kids to have some real fun, but where does that leave you? Should mom and dad just retire to their bedroom, lay on the bed and gaze at the sealing until playtime is over? (there are also other things you could do in that bed, but what if your little investigators barge in to show you what they’ve discovered on their ‛expedition’?). We said that rearranging the bedroom is out of the question for the kids, but you could do something about it. An intimate workout scenario for the two of you might be the thing that will keep you occupied and it can turn out to be pretty fun. And all you need for this ‛game’ is some basic workout equipment. There are many ways how you can turn your bedroom into an exercise room, and they mainly depend on the amount of space you have. If you have a spacious bedroom you could have some equipment present all the time, or you might have some smaller pieces of equipment stored in closets and ready to go. If your bedroom is a pretty small one maybe the best choice would be yoga or pilates where only exercise mat will do the job.
Divide the backyard
In the sunny and warm days of summer, your backyard turns into a fertile ground for every type of fun you can imagine. Of course, your kids will be out first, claiming their territory, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have some fun too. All you need to do is to divide the backyard into kids zone and grownups zone. Kids are used to playing everywhere, so try to ‛save’ the part of the yard with a maintained lawn for yourself and you can turn it into one of the most relaxing and pleasurable activities – a golf course. Of course, it will be a mini-golf course and nothing spectacular, but it will provide you with enough play time and the best thing is that you can do it yourself. And the fact that you don’t have the whole park for your game can easily be compensated if you reward yourself with some affordable equipment that will improve your golf swing in no time. It is very likely that your new golf course will seem like pretty interesting attraction for your kids too and there’s no damage if you let them give a try or two. But if you don’t want the grass trampled you’ll probably want to decorate their part of the yard with other attractions. Things like zip lines, swings, and chalkboard walls can easily keep the kids entertained throughout the whole summer.
As you can see, there are various ways to have fun inside your home with just some minor modifications. The most important thing is that you realize that all family members need their space to play (yes, grownups also play) – playgrounds are never built for one person.