Home Daycare Providers, How Do You Keep Your House Feeling Like A Home Not Just Work?

[Keysam]

Im wanting to open a home daycare within the next year and have many questions. I have an ok sized home that has one spare room that Ive currently been using as my craft room. For the daycare I will be turning that into a play room, and using my dining room for meals and messy daycare art projects.

Can I use my current dining room table or do I need to get a child sized table and chairs?

Also I don't want to feel like I am living at work, what can I do in the evenings and weekends to hide or diminish the amount of childcare things I see?

I was also wondering how many of you have a home daycare without excessive colorful wall hangings, rugs and etc? Will it be hard to get business if my playroom looks less like a center and more like someone's actual home?

[KidGrind]

Im wanting to open a home daycare within the next year and have many questions. I have an ok sized home that has one spare room that Ive currently been using as my craft room. For the daycare I will be turning that into a play room, and using my dining room for meals and messy daycare art projects.

Can I use my current dining room table or do I need to get a child sized table and chairs?

Also I don't want to feel like I am living at work, what can I do in the evenings and weekends to hide or diminish the amount of childcare things I see?

I was also wondering how many of you have a home daycare without excessive colorful wall hangings, rugs and etc? Will it be hard to get business if my playroom looks less like a center and more like someone's actual home?

I have my whole dining room dedicated as the kids room. I am licensed to have my living room as a sleeping room. It is free of childcare items, unless an infant is sleeping in a playpen.

My clients love my set up. They do not want their child in an in-home daycare that does not have a defined area. Some parents my prefer a home that does not look like a daycare.

[Controlled Chaos]

My down stairs is my daycare and upstairs is home. Though, I have a 1, 3 and 5 yo so everything sort of feels like a daycare but the upstairs space will shift as my children get older. Look into storage that hides daycare items but goes well with your grown up decor. It's all about storage

[hope]

My home does not look like a daycare. I make use of my whole house during the day. My playroom has two tall shelves that hold toys in baskets and bins. I have an extra bedroom that also has shelves filled with baskets and bins of toys. The baskets and bins are all decorative. The pack n plays are in this room. We eat in my kitchen and do arts and crafts in my dining room. Parents like the at home feel of my daycare. I have a cork board to hang artwork as would any home.

[Crazy8]

I have one designated room for daycare - it is what would be the formal living room in the front of the house. It is gated off on both ends (into hall & into dining room) and I just shut the lights and ignore it during non-daycare hours, LOL!!! :: ::

The rest of my home feels like my home, we have a family room for us and we are in the process of finishing the basement for us. Everyone says move the daycare down there but I would hate being stuck down there all day (kids are all 3 and under, going up and down would be a pain!!) and my own older kids will make better use of that space for hanging out with friends, sleepovers, etc. more than they would if we had that formal living room space back.

Overall I do not feel like my home is taken over by daycare - I just look at it as giving up that one room pays for the mortgage on the rest of the house!

[Blackcat31]

I keep my home looking like a home by keeping my daycare in another home. ::












(edited to add... for clarification purposes.... I operate my family child care out of a separate house used solely for child care)

[Ariana]

I have one main floor room for a playroom, like you are planning to do and I use the eat in kitchen for meals. We also sometimes use the basement and I have gross motor toys down there. In my previous home we had roughly 1400 sqft so toys were literally everywhere and I had to get used to it. We had to watch tv in the daycare space and I hated it. We just recently moved to a 3000sqft home so it is much easier to keep things separate. A small home is going to be tough because you feel like you never leave the daycare unfortunately. I also don't have uber colourful things. I have framed art that the kids made themselves and a cork board which holds more art and a family collage but that's it! I think as long as you have some colour in the playroom you are good.

I would LOVE to do what BlackCat does but I have no idea how I would even go about setting something like that up!

[kendallina]

I have a separate daycare space too. The only thing that home and daycare shares is the bathroom and a hallway. I love this set up and don't think I would still be doing daycare if I had to share space still.

When I didn't have a completely separate space, I had one bedroom as the main daycare playroom. But, like you, we used our dining room for meals and messy projects (which we did every day). I kept minimal art supplies in my laundry room (which was near kitchen) and everything else was stored in the basement with the rest of my daycare stuff. It did mean that many days I had to go downstairs to get supplies for whatever art project we were doing, but that was fine. We also used my livingroom several times throughout the day and I kept two baskets of toys and a basket of books that I rotated every week or two. We never used that space for more than 30 minutes at a time (it was mostly a transition space for when someone was done with a meal and needed something to do untli we could go upstairs to the playroom/bedroom).

Do you have a space that you can store your extra daycare items in? I think that made a huge differenec for me. it was great to have a basement that could hold all my extras. I don't like the clutter. I keep minimal storage in my playroom.

I'm legally unlicensed, so I don't know about using regular sized chairs and table, but that's how I did it. Also, if you're licensed, then they will have requirements about what you need to have hanging on the walls. On my walls playroom walls all I have is children's artwork displayed. I don't like kiddie-daycare posters personally.

[melskids]

It's been my experience that no matter HOW you set up...a separate space, integrated in, whatever....you will attract clients who want what you have and those who dont and choose elsewhere you dont want anyway. So whatever you do...however you set up...market THAT.

[Pepperth]

I have a playroom that we stay in 75 % of the day. My living room and kitchen are also allowed to be used in the daycare, but I mostly use those at meal time or craft time. While, the daycare does creep into the living room and kitchen, it takes maybe 5 minutes for me to put it back into the playroom. When daycare is done for the day, we put the baby gate up and rarely look at the playroom, . (Unless my 1 year old wants to go play in there.)

[Unregistered]

Pick colors that go with the rest of your house. If your home has all earth tones, the blaring primary colors will be too much. Find kid tables and chairs that you can paint (ikea's pine, comes to mind) and hunt for other things that are in your color scheme. That way, it blends in a lot more.