This toddler activity is brought to you by seven months of pregnancy – well, technically, I suppose a cumulative 53 months of pregnancy, along with the strong and unrelenting desire to have a quiet cup of tea.
All will be revealed, after lengthy discussion about boot-rooms/mudrooms/laundry rooms
It was also prompted by our latest round of renovations. My hormones-and-Pinterest-inspired enthusiasm for DIY came with an inconvenient repercussion – that is to say, that mr tMatM has been rather indisposed in terms of time-to-parent, whilst simultaneously updating three bathrooms and a Mudroom / laundry room. So finding simple indoor activities to keep everyone happy has been at the top of my list.
Talking of laundry rooms / mudrooms (and not mushrooms, despite my phone autocorrect being convinced that’s what I am trying to discuss) – talking of mudrooms, who knew how pretty they can be?
Image: Houzz
…And how much it might just improve one’s mood, to be in a nice space when corralling four children into shoes and raincoats and school bags and swim kits and, well you get the idea.
As an aside, we can probably assume that spending this much time thinking about mudrooms means that I am old – and also maybe don’t get out as much as I ought to.
Ours isn’t quite finished yet, but here are some of the rooms I have been using as inspiration (copying).
Image: Houzz
Image: @courtneyadamo and quite frankly if you’re not jealous of Courtney Adamo’s laundry room then I’m not sure this is the blogpost for you.
Image: Decoria
Image: Pinterest
Remember how much better the floor was starting to look?
Much better. And yet, what began as a simple interim floor paint job has turned into floors/walls/lighting/hooks/built in shelves and unfortunately for my husband I really like these wood walls:
Image: Houzz
Image: Houzz
Not a mudroom, but a very nice wall:
Image: Cup of Jo home tour
I think a herringbone wall might be pushing my luck though?
Image: Pinterest
That was a long mudroom chat. Did you just want the toddler activity? Apologies.
The Hunt for Small Things
This hunt is endlessly adaptable because, in true smug and lazy style, it requires no preparations, and only those materials that happen to be to hand.
In this case, the materials are multiple small containers discarded by an increasingly jaded husband:
You too can collect containers like this if you decide to insist on semi-unnecessary home improvements
Similarly, sometimes I bring little bags, jars, or buckets on a walk or beach trip, and the children will find a collection of treasures – pebbles or sticks or leaves – real treasures that I will find months later stashed in a corner somewhere because I felt too guilty to bin them.
This time, though, involved no leaving the house: I sent Mim (4) and Wilf (2) on a small-things-hunt, to see how many things they could find to fit in their boxes.
For scale, a small child
They took this very seriously and twenty minutes later (read: optimum tea and mindless internet scrolling time) re-emerged with boxes just able to close on some pretty special things that they had collected around the house:
The fondness for hatchimals in our household means that Wilf has a fairly loose interpretation of how the new baby will arrive next month (“Mum, when the baby pops out…”)
After arranging everything on the table, they promptly disappeared to find a second round of collectibles. So I think we can chalk that up as a success.
The hunt for small things continues, as do the renovations.
tMatM x
