Summertime Outdoor Organization

I get asked quite a bit about how I get my kids to play outside so much. Our whole family loves being outside. I think that’s the bottomline. If Chris and I are outside, we make the kids come out with us. They don’t have to do what we are doing (which is usually home repairs or grilling dinner), but they have to be outside doing something.

Because we are outside a lot, we’ve put quite a bit of money and time into our backyard. We bought the trampoline, we built the treehouse, we always have water balloons ready to blow up, we buy new pool toys and floats every few months, and we keep a hefty supply of yard games within easy reach (corn hole and bocce ball are the two big favorites around here, but we also have croquet, horseshoes, and a ladder game that are fun). It is a choice we make with our money because we believe being outside is healthy for all of us. Plus, we love family time together out there.

Another thing that we do that really encourages the kids to have fun outside is to actually play with them outside. When they weren’t using the treehouse for a while, I spent one morning out there with them cleaning out spiderwebs and sweeping it out because they said they didn’t like being in there with all the bugs and dirt (insert eye roll here). After we made it clean and accessible to them again, I asked them if they’d ever played “Neverland” (which is a game I completely made up on the spot). In Neverland, we were the lost boys and we lived in the treehouse. The entire backyard was Neverland. The pool was the lagoon. We turned the trampoline into our “flying school,” we made the bushes the place where Captain Hook’s pirates lived, etc. I only had to plant the seed of imagination with them before they completely took over and now they play Neverland out there all the time. Although, I can feel Bean aging out of some of the imaginary games these days, which breaks my heart. But that’s a blog post for another day…

The same thing happened when they stopped using the trampoline for a while. Chris went out there and trimmed all the branches and swept it off for them, then he played some games out there with them for a while (check out this blog post for fun trampoline games) and – voila! They suddenly loved the trampoline again. Never underestimate setting the example for your kids – even during play times! No matter how fun things are, things are infinitely more fun when a parents plays it with you. This goes even for middle school and high schoolers, who will PRETEND that they aren’t interested, but in reality, they like the attention, too. 🙂

But aside from the things we do outside, I think a key component to always being outside is to make it easy to be outside. Today I’m sharing a few organization tips for how I keep our house centered around outdoor play, starting with the pool.

Beside our pool, we keep a large weatherproof storage box for all the kids swim toys and floats. We bought this at Home Depot several years ago, but this one on Amazon is very similar. It usually sits on our deck, but we’ve recently moved it down closer to the pool and I think we’ll keep it near this area once the deck is finished being rebuilt because it’s easier for the kids to get to it and so they are more likely to use it.

Inside this box, I keep a smaller plastic storage bin for small items like dive toys, water bombs, and goggles. Usually when we are out by the pool, this smaller bin is what they pull out and keep on the edge of the pool for easy playing. It makes clean up pretty easy, too. They just dump everything back in it and it’s ready for next time.

I keep a fully packed outside pouch ready to go at all times. This pouch goes to the beach with us or out to the pool whenever we go and has all of our essentials. I bought the bag itself in the Target dollar spot and replace it every summer there, too. Inside it, I keep lots of sunscreen. We all use SPF 30 on a daily basis and I find the Target brand to be my favorite, but Coppertone works really well, too. Then, each kid has a face stick they use and I have the Neutrogena baby lotion that I use on my face because… redhead. I also use the face sticks on our shoulders and the tops of our feet if we are at the beach. Also inside the bag are ponytail holders and a drink coozie or two. While I’m outside, I use this bag to hold my phone, too.

We also have a shower outside (Chris ran it from the downstairs bathroom water line) that has both hot and cold water. This makes it easy for the kids to jump out of the pool and either rinse the chlorine off (which they never do, but it sounds great in a blog post!) or go ahead and take a shower with soap and shampoo after their last swim of the day.

When you come inside from the backyard, Chris made sure when he renovated downstairs that there was easy access to the bathroom, which is why we put two doors in there. I keep a rug down in this little walkway to help minimize the water dripping and all the dog scratches since this is where their dog door is, too.

Next to this outdoor access, we have a big storage closet that holds most of our outdoor fun and accessories. Chris built some shelves in there for me to keep beach towels on. The bathroom isn’t too far away and I could have stored them in there, but I want everything easy to access for outside, so this little nook works great. I also keep our outdoor bag on this shelf for whoever to grab when they get a towel to go outside.

Above it, it holds some of our family board games, too.

Also in this closet are some bookshelves we stuck in there to hold all the rest of our board games, which we play a LOT. But above them, we keep all of our outdoor thingies. These huge wooden frames are the base of an outdoor ping pong table that we no longer have and are a sore subject between me and Chris because WHY DO WE STILL HAVE THESE?!?!?!

So, AROUND the useless ping pong table frame are our bug spray items that we take outside at night. Florida mosquitos and other little pests are no joke!

Next to these, I keep a big bowl of coozies that we bring out when we have people over by the pool. And next to that bowl are all of our grilling supplies. We use a charcoal grill and so we keep newspapers, lighters, and flavored wood chips here.

So, that’s how we encourage being outside in our family. We make sure we have fun things outside for them to do, we try to keep outdoor supplies stocked all the time in easy-to-access places, and we make family time outside a priority. As I write this, my whole family is outside in the backyard, as a matter of fact. I think I’ll head out there and join them… 🙂