How turn children’s playtime into a fun way to maintain and style your home
Getting children involved in clean-up and décor decisions can go a long way towards maintaining order and style in your space
It seems nothing can mess a pristine home interior than the arrival of little ones, leaving parents at a loss as to how to maintain an attractive and orderly space.
Dutch designer Nicole de Bie understands how quickly children and their trappings can overtake a home.
“As an aunt of four nieces and nephews, I experienced the process of change that a child brings into its environment,” she says. “I saw my sisters’ stylish interiors becoming a cluttered playground. To retain some sort of adult relaxing time, they were cleaning up the toy ‘warzone’ after each bedtime – only to have to repeat the process all over again the next day.”
The designer posed a challenge to herself: to create a safe playing environment, to get the children to clean up their toys themselves, “and have this all look stylish”.
Looking through a child’s eyes, she observed that cleaning up signals the end of playtime. “Which kid wants that? So I figured, why not make the closet the play object itself? Kids see play in everything - let’s make cleaning up fun. So instead of a massive, passive, hard storage object that only takes up space, the storage object and the content need to become the game.”
The result is the Hoppetee, a puzzle-like “soft closet” made out of soft materials that sits low on the ground. “A child can simply unfold the box and make their toys appear,” de Bie says.