The Blessing of Two living rooms

We lived in our favorite house for a little over three years!  It was tiny and wonderful.  We have since moved and the children still miss it dearly.  One floor, around 1,600 square feet and three bedrooms. The layout was perfect!  There were two small living rooms and we started something we had never intended to start!  We had a grown-up living room and a kids living room.  Now this may sound like only kids in one room or only adults in the other, but you should know that would be entirely impossible for a homeschooling family of nine in a small space.  I think as a mom it's impossible to escape your children no matter your home or family size!

The kid's living room was to the left when you entered the front door.  The reason behind this was twofold.  I wanted everyone who walked into our home to know the importance of our children, after all once you opened the front door there was a room with the alphabet on the walls, a tiny table and old furniture!  It also made our home instantly appealing to children who were visiting!  You could come right into a room full of toys and furniture you could bounce around on!  Boxes of books lined the walls and sometimes trains and a play kitchen were strewn about.

The grown-up living room was kind of at the other end of the house.  Children were always welcomed but you couldn't jump on the sofa, bounce on the chair or eat popcorn in that room.  The kids learned this very quickly and it was such a great way to train the children for visiting with others!  If we were at a friend's house we would just say "Hey, this is a grown-up living room!" They would know they weren't allowed to jump on furniture or eat in there or be loud and crazy!

I used to have a rule that kids couldn't jump off the couches etc.  but we live in North Idaho, the winters are long, and honestly I didn't really care if they bounced off  the couch doing tricks!  The days are pretty long here come December.  I did however have a problem with them doing that at someone else's house..oops!

Hope this tip helps someone else out!  What are your tricks?  Do you have a basement or a kids corner?  Do you allow any couch bouncing?