The plan was to get rid of our office now that I no longer work from home. Upon trying to do that this weekend we discovered we honestly have no where to put those things in our house besides cramming it all in the master and creating a huge space problem in there.
The other solution we can up with is to give up our master bedroom for the boys room and playroom. My question is would you do this?
Pros: it's right off the living room/kitchen so as they get older its easier to watch them while cooking, they aren't shoved off in the very front of our house, it's darker and quieter in our room, they would have a ton of floor space, we can get all their toys in one room, they have a bathroom to themselves (meaning I don't have to constantly find somewhere to put their stuff when we have an overnight guest), and we baby proof one room with carpet vs hardwood. Plus we get to keep office for my photography equipment and editing computer.
Cons: we loose our master, we start using the guest bathroom, our closet would still be in the master so not in our room, our room is now in the front of the house (road noise), they would now be asleep off the common area of the house so we have to watch noise a little more especially when people are over during nap times.
I know of a few people that have done this. I wouldn't simply because we couldn't fit our king size bed into either of our other rooms and I am never going back to a smaller bed. EVER.
What about selling the stuff you don't need? Office furniture/etc? If you ever do need to work from home, you can just set up at the table. Turn that into the kids' playroom?
I wouldn't say we have a small house, but our bedroom situation is less than ideal (ours is large and the other 2 are really small.) The boys have one as a bedroom, but there are no toys in there, just bed/clothes/books. Their toys are in the basement. The other bedroom is L's office since she works from home a lot. At one point her office was in our bedroom (allowing us to have a guest room), but it wasn't ideal as she often gets up and starts working at 5am or works really late.
I would probably leave them in their room. Having them in a high traffic/louder part of the house would deter me.
The biggest issue is we sold pretty much anything that we could before they arrived to save space and money. We are literally down to the bare minimum furniture. For example in our living room we only have a couch as we sold the recliner an love seat. We can consolidate down to one desk as we each have a computer and desk and we could sell those two desks and get a smaller one but M is completely against that as she loves her desk and her computer not being slowed down by my photo editing software. Surprisingly she is ok moving to the smaller room as she is tired of playing what she calls the baby toy shuffle... Aka put the jumperoos away, get out the swings, put the swings away get out the play mat, put that away to get out the jumperoos rinse and repeat all day long!
Luckily in about 6 months they will be too mobile for the swings or jumperoos and we can probably get rid of those. The bad news is those will be replaced by something else.
I would try to make the office furniture fit in other areas of the house and keep your master. Is it possible to get 2 small computer desks and fit them in the kitchen/dining area or living room somehow?
I can see the toy shuffle being a pain, but that is really only going to be for another few months of your lives, I would just make it work for the time being.
My friends live in a one bedroom with their kid. At 2 they moved all her stuff (toys, bed, clothing) in the bedroom and they sleep in the living room. I don't know where they put their own clothing but I know they're a lot happier. Kid stuff takes up a lot of room and they hated having all that out. Now when their kid goes to bed the whole rest of apartment is theirs.