Sustainable playroom design

Setting up a beautiful playroom sustainably is easier and more cost-effective than you’d think.

I’m doing something differently today and sharing with you a little bit about my life, along with some, hopefully, helpful hints on how to design a play space with child development, the environment, and your budget in mind.

1.       Bring in natural materials, and if possible, natural light.

I don’t think I am breaking any news by suggesting that natural materials create a soothing, relaxing atmosphere, not just for your child(ren) but also for you; being in a beautiful, naturally lit space definitely helps me to be more present when I am playing with my son.

Child-friendly natural materials in the playroom could be wooden furniture — which can be new or second-hand — felt toys, wooden toys, rattan baskets, woven baskets, wooden boxes for storage…you are only limited by your imagination. Even a few items from nature, such as sticks, shells and leaves, can be beautiful additions and inspire children’s imaginations!

One of my son’s favourite things to play with at the moment is a small, incidentally-gathered, collection of rocks.

Natural light enhances happiness, improves focus, and helps us connect to our circadian rhythms. Instead of turning on the bright light in our playroom (and the rest of our home) when night starts to fall, I like to only turn on the amount of light we need and allow our circadian rhythms to gently move us towards sleep. That’s the plan, anyway, and it usually does work (now that he’s almost 4, I will add).

2.       Reimagine household items.

I really love the idea of play silks – as long as they are cruelty free, of course, like the EarthSylk collection, sold by one of my favourite local child-friendly companies, Little Big Learning. They are beautiful to look at, and a gorgeous sensory experience. Sensory play promotes ‘exploration, curiosity, problem-solving and creativity’ (Only About Children), as well as much more.

Play silks are a perfect example of an open-ended toy, which is a toy that doesn’t have a prescribed use. Your little one(s) can take some control and use their imaginations to turn it into anything that they want to be. Play silks are just one example of a sensory and open-ended play-thing.

However, they can also be a little bit expensive, depending on your budget. So, whilst they are absolutely still on my wish-list, in the meantime, I’m using some old scarves, stored in a very pretty, used T2 cardboard box that was the packaging of a birthday gift. My son loves to play not just with the scarves but also with the box.

I also simply use a slightly-too-frayed-to-wear, vintage, black, box-shaped handbag for his ‘doctor’s bag’, along with some second-hand wooden and cloth toy doctor’s accessories, given to my son by his Grandma. He loves it, and doesn’t appear to care that they weren’t brand new when he got them.

3.       Buy second-hand, swap or borrow.

I don’t always buy second-hand…I do have a penchant for beautiful, Montessori-inspired toys, and for birthdays, I often like to splurge a little on my son. But I do buy second-hand a lot, and I think it’s great not only for my budget but also to not pass on any class stigma around second-hand items to my child.

I’d love to see a world where gifting second-hand items (even if they aren’t vintage-quality) doesn’t lessen the perceived value of the gift. (I am at a point where I don’t feel this way when someone gives me a gift, but I do if I give them a second-hand gift; it’s something that I’m working on.) But I digress.

Buying second-hand is also a wonderful way to model ‘reducing and reusing’ and as such is great for the environment. Op shops often employ people living with disability, and I love supporting this. (I think all industries need to be inclusive.)

Buying from places like op shops and Facebook Marketplace and Gumtree can reduce your carbon footprint and connect you with your local community. And there are also ways to enjoy free toys, such as joining ‘buy nothing’ groups on Facebook, using initiatives such as Freecycle, borrowing toys from the Rockingham Toy Library, or swapping with friends. (Which I am sure you are already all over!)

4.       Embrace loose parts play.

Loose parts play is exactly what it sounds like – providing children with a collection of loose parts, that can be either manmade or natural, that are portable and that do not need to be related to each other in any way. This is another example of open-ended play, and I was very interested to learn that it was an architect, Sam Nicholson, who came up with the term ‘loose parts’ — this article on the Aussie Childcare Network page has some excellent background on this. Put simply, loose parts play helps children to connect to their environment, their bodies, and nurture their creativity and cognitive development, amongst other benefits.

A few months’ back, my Mum was sorting through her collection of jewellery. She’s a maximalist and had a LOT to sort through. She asked me if I wanted any of her earrings and I said yes, not for me, but for her grandson. Mum wore a lot of clip-on earrings at one stage, and she really likes the big, colourful ones, so I thought that he may like them for loose parts play, and he does! They now live in a blue cardboard tube that once held kid’s Grin biodegradable dental flosses, and are regularly brought out to be ‘dinosaur food’.

5.       Don’t throw it just because it’s broke.

In her podcast, one of my favourite parenting mentors, Rachel Rainbolt, interviewed Teacher Tom (Tom Hobson) who ‘After nearly 20 years as a teacher at the Woodland Park Cooperative School teaching children from 2-5, he has stepped into a new role as Head of Education for Weekdays where he helps teachers, daycare providers, and parents to start their own play-based neighborhood preschools and daycares’.

One of the things that really stuck with me was when they talked about his time at the co-op school, and how so many of the donated toys were broken yet the kids still loved to play with them! I remember not being too surprised, since children are wonderful at accepting things as they find them and using their imaginations, but wondering if the kids would like the broken version of the toys as much as they would new ones.

Well. Although it does give me a bit of an eye-twitch, haha, to buy plastic toys, when I saw a grabber with a dinosaur head at the Port Kennedy pharmacy, I knew my son would love it. By grabber, I mean, it (was) a long stick with a handle at one end that he squeezed, making the dinosaur’s mouth open and shut at the other end. He played with it every single day. He also smashed it onto things regularly and eventually the handle broke, so I sticky-taped it back together and he then played with it until the jaw broke.

He also has toy cars that are broken, and a pram that has a pretty squeaky wheel (I really need to WD40 it), and he still plays with them. My child can be very physical with his toys, so having some broken ones is a natural consequence.  Alongside that, working to fix them together can be a beautiful natural learning opportunity, and keeping toys that are a little broken counteracts our culture of quick disposability and consumerism.

This is my final tip, though I am sure there are many more ways to design a child-development-led, environmentally-friendly, and economical play space. Maybe there are some things you could teach me?

Whilst not all of these tips may not lend themselves to a playroom or space that serves as click-bait on Pinterest, they will serve your child’s development, and your budget and conscience, and aren’t those things more important, anyway?