The neverending playroom

A couple of winters ago we enclosed part of an upstairs terrace to make a playroom. After an ongoing saga of leaking roofs , badly-installed air-conditioning units and an unlevelled floor, I may finally be able to exile all the toys upstairs and reclaim the living room. 

But will it be the answer to my prayers? Or will it just be a dumping ground for my daughters’ junk? 

When we decided to enclose the terrace it seemed so simple, the perfect solution to our toy invasion problem. Now, I’m the first to admit that I’m rather lacking in the tidiness department, something I personally put down to being English. (It seems to me that as a nation the Spanish, and here I’m talking about the girls, are much tidier than their British counterparts.) Obviously living in Spain, surrounded by house-proud mothers I do try, but it’s just not in my DNA. I’m also a terrible hoarder, saving egg boxes to make space rockets or crocodiles, plastic trays to use as painting pallets or any shiny paper for ‘sticking’. 

So, the idea of an organised playroom with a ‘place for everything and everything in its place’ was very appealing. We could have a grown up sitting room again! So on went the roof, up went the air conditioning. And then down came the rain and out came the mop and bucket as our wonderful new room filled with water.

This went on for about a year, calling various workmen to come and sort the leaky floor, re-install the air-con and sitting with baited breath every time there was a heavy downpour to see how many bucket-loads we had to empty out.

But now we finally seem to have the structural problems solved and we’re ready for the wooden floor to be laid tomorrow, fingers crossed. 

A few weeks ago we made our first epic journey to Ikea and bought the storage furniture we need to accommodate five and a half years’ worth of toys. All being well we will spend this weekend sorting toys into the storage boxes. (And hopefully throwing some out, if I get my way!)

Of course even if we do manage to cram the toys from all over the house into this one 6.25m2 playroom, come September, when the birthdays start again, we’ll be overflowing into the rest of the house.

They say children can be taught anything and I’m just hoping I’ve not left it too late to show mine how to be organised.

I go to some friends’ impeccable houses and their children are automatically tidy and put one toy away before getting out another, but how do they manage it? Why can’t my children do that? Maybe the problem is because mine are only half Spanish, after all, it’s in the genes!