A veneer of microplastics lay waste to a handcrafted Moroccan rug. Baskets overflowing with construction vehicles in DayGlo hues obscure meticulously arranged shelves. Skyscrapers created from magnetic tiles tower over occasional side tables. Children and decor are like oil and water — only a pack of wolves could wreak more havoc with your interior design schemes.
The paraphernalia of childhood is, quite simply, not chic. Sure, you can start with pastel-shaded wooden toys and industrially designed playthings, but the primary-coloured polymers are, at some point, coming for you.
After seven years writing about my experiences with my children, I know far better than to tell any other person in service to the next generation what to do. However, if you are feeling that they have taken over every centimetre of your home space and that has begun to bother you enough to do something about it, I have some ideas.
Who says kids’ bedrooms can’t be stylish?
YUKI SUGIURA
I live in a four-bedroom rental which has plenty of space for storage. But for the first three years of kid-life, I lived in about 550 sq ft, in a second-floor flat with no outside space. I got used to folding down the Yoyo buggy every time I walked through the door because I couldn’t get to the bathroom otherwise.
• 11 decorative toys for kids’ bedrooms and playrooms
While I have the privilege of square footage now, I have also applied these rules in a home in which you couldn’t swing a cat, let alone a toddler.
I don’t believe tidiness is closer to anything aside from mild obsessive compulsion, but like so many of us, I do have the mitigating circumstance that my home is also my office.
Due to my own relationship with spaces — my environment has a huge impact on my mood, and I find chaos borderline unbearable — I can’t just sit and focus with Mobilo littered in my eyeline. So, I’ve had to come up with a system that works for both my small people and my sanity.
Here are some ideas to get you started.
Ormerod sets clear boundaries for the adult living spaces in her home, including this living/dining room
YUKI SAGIURA
1. Keep your adult space
Very early on, my husband and I made a decision that we weren’t going to store any toys in the adult living space and I’ve kept to that pledge more or less as my two boys have grown into warring locusts, now aged four and seven. The hardest part of parenting is saying something and meaning it, and they are always looking to chip away at your resolve. You give them a handful of plastic bricks and before you know it, your sitting room resembles a dystopic version of Legoland. Obviously, they require reminding from time to time, and obviously they sometimes throw a hissy over it. But overall, it works.
2. No marker pens!
The impulse to graffiti can start young, and after one particularly heartbreaking interaction between a Sharpie and a cream bouclé bench cushion that I had painstakingly handmade, I simply rid the house of every non-washable pen. Fortunate that, because my youngest thinks he’s Banksy and has since defaced beds, tables and rugs. At least I’m now safe in the knowledge that Vanish would do the job.
3. Buy vintage
I’m not talking about priceless antiques here, but older pieces of furniture that have already weathered storms. I have a 1950s wooden dining table that was found in a French school and reclaimed by Merchant & Found. It is bulletproof and absorbs every spill or smash. It is far from immaculate or polished, but my taste leans towards the imperfect anyway. If the children were to scratch or mark it, I could either sand it down or preserve it as another secret of its history.
Ormerod stores some toys on vertical shelves that only she can reach
ELLE CALVEY
4. Try vertical shelving
“Pull it all out” is a madness my nervous system cannot manage. I am definitely anti Ikea’s Trofast storage, with its pull-out boxes and trays. Here I’ve taken tips from my son’s previous nursery and set the rule that you cannot play with a whole new basket of bricks or train track or K’nex until you put away the one you’ve finished with. To prevent the sea of stuff rising beyond ankle height, I store their toys on vertical shelves which only I can reach, so they have to ask me to make the swap. It’s more of a drag for me in the moment, but at least I’m not collecting a confetti spray of 9,872 jigsaw pieces come 6.27pm.
5. Use actually washable fabrics
These days there are great spot-clean and machine-washable soft furnishings that can stand up to nearly anything. I’m a big Ruggable disciple and can vouch for the resilience of their rugs. Recently my big boy had a nosebleed which seemed to gush from nowhere and I was able to just fold up the rug, pop it on a quick cycle and a day later it was dry and stain-free.
The new Ruggable x Sanderson collection has the sweetest designs for a child’s room — the Pamir Garden Fern and the Squirrel and Hedgehog styles are magical. I also have Loaf’s clever velvet on my sofa and that withstood my youngest son covering his entire body in yoghurt and rolling all over 50 per cent of the visible fabric. It came off with baby wipes — not a spot to hint at the tale.
Papier-mâché animal heads in her eldest son’s bedroom
YUKI SAGIURA
6. Give them a choice
If my children made all the decor choices in their rooms, one would involve four pillar box-red walls, while the other would feature a 6ft decal of Bluey. While I’m not looking to create painfully tasteful schemes in my children’s sleep zones, I do also have eyes.
One way to find the sweet spot is to offer them choice within limited options that you can stomach. Keep them involved under your guidance. I’ve pored over paint charts with them, talked through the artists and famous artworks they’d like to have in their rooms and even had them be my assistant when I’ve been making furniture, curtains and decorative accessories. My eldest son has three papier-mâché animal faces on the wall that we made together, which he still loves.
7. Find new homes for old toys
Every few months, I sort through the baskets and toy boxes with my children to find things they would like to donate to Fara Kids or sell at our local boot sale in Chiswick, west London (they get to keep the proceeds). They are fortunate enough to have two sets of generous grandparents, who don’t always follow my miserly instructions “not to spoil the boys” at birthdays and Christmas. The result is a lot of stuff taking up real estate. Involving them in the redistribution process has definitely built an understanding of the importance of quality and longevity, as well as circularity.
Read Katherine Ormerod’s parenting Substack, Every Shade of Grey
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