With every toy bought or gifted, accumulation starts to happen and your living room now looks like a unicorn sitting on a rainbow, there’s colour everywhere. Soon after, you realize that either you don’t want to spend any more money on toys which are really expensive or, you just don’t want to have any more toys in the house, enough!
New parents find themselves with a living room take over. As every month passes by, baby items need to be accessible everywhere around the house, especially in those spaces where you spend most of your time. This new parenting thing has to be time-efficient and, who wants to go upstairs every time to change a diaper? Especially if you have a chubby baby (they are so cute). If you are using cloth diapers, check out my post!
Solution
Take advantage of the current things you have in your house and repurpose them for a few hours, days, weeks or months! Most of the time, babies play with a toy for 5 minutes and bye-bye, they throw it to the side until who knows when it’s interesting again. If you are already in this stage, especially when babies are mobile, you’ll find yourself taking stuff away from their hands constantly, stuff they aren’t supposed to play with. Why in the world every single kid wants to play with stuff they are not supposed to? I’m starting to think they like the word no.
Be innovative, take a look around and ask yourself: Is this item safe for my baby to play with? If the answer is yes, either clean it to be exclusively used for your baby or just let her play with it for a little while. Examples are:
Toys from the Kitchen
- Wooden spoons
- Plastic utensils, like flippers
- Stainless steel whiskers
- Plastic cups
- All size and shapes of plastic containers, including lids
- Pots, lids and frying pans that aren’t too heavy or fragile
- Baking sheets
- Do a sensorial exercise with different grains and stick in your baby’s hands and feet, making sure he doesn’t swallow anything that can obstruct the airway or cause a belly ache. Examples are beans, rice, couscous, flour and lentils. He will love the colour, shapes and feeling on his skin.
Toys from the Bedroom
- Doors using a stopper and making sure they can’t damage their fingers in any possible way
- Clean clothes. Make a little pile in the center of the room, and let him discover colours, textures of different fabrics and printings
- Take all the cushions from the bed and lay them on the floor for your baby to crawl
- Use towels to play pick-a-boo
- Take a few bedsheets and do a fort. See this example.
- Stairs can be fun and an opportunity to train your baby to go up and down, always with supervision
- Use mirrors in a place that they can’t be reached and to a height where your baby can see herself; as low as possible.
Other rooms of your house
- Cardboard boxes from presents or deliveries.
- Eventually, your baby will eat dirt in the yard, park or at school. Let her play with the grass, leaves and sticks, always supervising what she takes into her mouth and avoiding poking her eyes or ears with a sharp object..
I hope I didn’t miss an important one. Have fun!
Love,
Alexis
