Repurposed: The Sandbox

I might be among the minority here, but I detest sandboxes. I love for my kids to get to play with them at other people's houses, but cleaning up the mess afterwards is no fun at all.

When our son was little though, our son's therapist had recommended using one of these because our son had a true aversion to anything that felt funny to him. He would really freak out about sand, grass, or anything that would stick to him. The sandbox provided great therapy to help him get over these issues and now he is as dirty and sticky as any other child on earth.

Now that he had grown out of this issue, I was not looking forward to cleaning up sand around our house. We also had not bought any sand yet this year and I was trying to think of a new purpose for the sandbox. That is when I got the brilliant (probably not as brilliant as I think, but it was brilliant to me!) idea to repurpose this into a small baby wading pool.

Our daughter is seventeen months old and still not walking. She wants to be part of the sprinkler fun, but this requires me running through them with her and some days I just want to park myself in a chair while they play. Creating a space for her to play in water would be great, but I did not want to deal with those kiddy pools again this year (1. they are a pain in the rear 2. they get nasty quickly 3. they are a pain in the rear). I thought our sandbox would be a great substitute because it is not too deep, but deep enough for a toddler to enjoy a little splashing. It is also not deep enough that it requires a family of four to use all of their strength to tip the thing over and cause permanent grass damage from resting on our lawn.

Lucky for us, it is also deep enough for mommy & daddy to pop their toes in when the kids are in bed and enjoy a drink & chat.

What is something that you have repurposed in your home that has been a roaring success?