Our play kitchen has been one of my daughter’s favorite toys. She loves preparing goodies like her mommy and sharing them with all our guests. And now her younger brother follows suit. It inspires such creativity and delight in them and is a fun toy for all her little friends as well.
It can be quite an investment to buy various wooden or felt pretend food items for her kitchen, so we decided to go the frugal route and re-use all of our own empty canned/plastic containers from our own personal use. It gives my daughter such delight to be using the “real” thing in her kitchen!
I simply took an assortment of empty food items – milk, juice, butter, sour cream, cereal boxes, canned goods, etc.- washed them thoroughly, stuffed them with scrap paper and then sealed them securely with clear packing tape. If they had a lid (as in the peanut butter, yogurt, etc), we sealed the lid on with glue. It is also helpful with these jars to secure the label on with packing tape to make sure it doesn’t peel off. It took a bit of time to build our stash as things were used up in the kitchen, but soon she had a good supply of food items to make everything to her hearts content!
There is no end to the frugal enjoyment of pretend food preparation with recycled containers from our own kitchen!
I loved playing with empty real food containers when I was a little girl. They were some of my favorite toys, as well as play money made from green construction paper & then laminated, an old empty check book, and a “credit card” that was from a credit card offer received in the mail (although I probably would not encourage the credit card since I don’t want my children learning to use credit cards for grocery items). So much fun & much more frugal!
When I was a kid my play kitchen food was a combination of recycled containers, but my mom & I also had great fun (at least I did) making salt dough food. We made “bread” in a kid-size bread pan that mom often let me bake REAL bread in too. We made blueberry pancakes and chocolate chip cookies and donuts and . . . I don’t remember what all else. It was fun to make & then mom baked them and I think painted some type of a sealant over them, and I had them to use in my play kitchen. A few of them are still in the play kitchen stuff mom has in her basement for the grandkids, though over the years most have gotten broken.
We do this too! I also took a paper towel cardboard roll (you could use TP rolls) and cut them, added a round piece on top and taped it on. I wrote “S” on one and “P” on the other and drew little dots on the tops. Salt and pepper shakers! And if they get messed up, no problem! Just wait for that next roll of TP to be gone. Ha! My kiddos are still too small to understand how to “Play kitchen” but I hope someday they will be “making” all sorts of delectable dishes for their stuffed animals and dolls. My husband is a pastor, and we were blessed by a couple at church with a play kitchen cupboard that the man made himself. I was so excited because my 2 year old loves to play with the little kitchen at our local natural parenting/cloth diaper store. They have one just like yours. They sell felt food, but I haven’t purchased any yet. My kids seem to be satisfied with their empty sour cream and cottage cheese containers and cans of tomatoes!
We do this too! Such a fun way to stock the play kitchen.
This is a great idea. I have taken my empty spice jars and washed them out and given them to my daughter to play with. We have a lot of store bought items, but a lot of the cardboard items will get ruined pretty quickly, so re using mini cereal boxes (variety packs) and jello boxes is great. Costs nothing extra and when they get ruined it’s no big deal. Great post!
When I was 5 my daddy built me a sturdy little cupboard and bought me a set of little Tupperware dishes. Twenty-five years later my nieces and nephews and our young music students spend hours playing kitchen with those dishes and the cupboard.
There are some wonderful pictures at the blog Better After that show how people take entertainment centers and turn them into DARLING little kitchens. My sister bought an entertainment center for ten bucks. With a little paint and a few knobs and things, that’s an inexpensive toy that will be used a LOT.
I get plastic fruit at garage sales, which gives the children some Real Food to play with. I also found a fake bread loaf at a garage sale and used it for decor in my kitchen. I caught my 3-year-old nephew biting it because he thought it looked real! Sort of treasure those little teeth marks . . .
What a simple & wondeful idea! Don’t know why I never thought of that!
This is pretty cute.
I used this idea plenty of times, as a playschool teacher, and also as a parent! It’s wonderful to me how children really do gravitate towards playing with REAL items, and will always prefer them over toys, when they are available.
I applied this principle when providing REAL dishes for the kids to ‘cook’ with, which I had purchased cheaply second hand: pots, wisk, wooden spoons, kettle, plates, cups and so on. I found they were instinctively very careful with ceramic things, such as tea-cups, and in a whole year of playschool not one cup was broken!
Other real ‘toys’ included: old telephones, an old typewriter that still worked, table cloth and napkins, towels and wash clothes and a baby tub, vases with real flowers to arrange, silk scarves, luggage, clothing and shoes, and so on…
Our kids loved doing this, too. My older ones helped the little one make a menu complete with “party tray” options. Hours of creative fun!
We got our little kitchen from a garage sale too, so can’t justify another one, but IKEA has a darling, sturdy wood one (and reasonably priced) too.
http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/70129801 that is larger than this one sounds.
I love this idea! I bought used fake food online but had to donate all the “junk” food that was in the mixed bags. I was surprised how much influential fast food and processed foods are in the things we allow our children to be shaped by! I seek to reinvent “delicious” in our house and bring forth only foods that are nourishing and tasty. My daughter asks for asparagus over sweets all the time. Her play kitchen food should reflect that which we really value – God’s provision of fresh produce!
I love the idea of sealing them shut with glue. I have sent used containers outside for the playhouse kitchen but they seem to end up in the yard filled with sand or scattered and missing their covers.
I know how fun these simple toys can be!
When I was younger we loved playing with these at our grandparent’s house (they kindly collected quite a few empty boxes and bottles for our fun).
We would play “shop” rather than kitchen, and our Grandad would make the phone ring for us to answer. Then he would make phone orders to call for the groceries that he wanted. We’d package and deliver them in grocery bags to wherever he was in the house. We loved stocking the shelves, organising all the boxes and bottles for our little shop, where the customers could also come to buy direct.
This was all over 10 years ago and I still remember what fun we had with them and these great “toys”. Children can have fun with almost anything – especially if there are adults willing to encourage imagination and play along.
Enjoy your children!
Angela
So creative!! I should probably start saving some things for my baby girl!
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And as added incentive, when she’s big enough to do her own grocery shopping, she’ll already know which labels to look for
What a great idea! We have a lot of play food, but could use some boxes/containers and this is a perfect reuse for what we are already bringing into the house!
What a great idea! I’m definitely tucking this one away for future reference.
Lindsey, Where did you get that cute little kitchen set? I really love it and I know that our daughter would love it too.
Thank you so much for the tip on saving our old containers for the kids to use. I am going to do that!
It is the Educo My Creative Cookery Club kitchen set which I purchased from Amazon. It is the perfect size and my kids love it. It’s not too big, bulky, or plastic. It does include some basic pots, pans, utensils and a few food items, which was an awesome start for them. It was also very reasonable for a wooden kitchen set with the included items.
After I reread the post I realized that I could click on the name of it and it would take me right to it. Sorry!
I really like that it is wooden! You do not see that very often any more. I LOVE that it coes with the wooden dishes too! That is so neat! Thanks so much for the info on it!
How are you doing? When is baby due! My sister-in-law is due andy day now too! We are waiting to find out what they have! They alreay have 2 little boys.:)
August 3rd!
As a kid growing up, I lived on a farm where we burned our own trash. I can vividly remembering digging through the burn pile for half burned items after the fire had gone out so that I could rescue them and put them in the kitchen of my outdoor treehouse. Now I think how dirty that must have been but I knew my kids would love using our old food packages. When something is empty in our house, they often come begging to put it in their kitchen. And the same philosophy holds true for other kitchen items. Buying the real items at a garage sale or even at Walmart often is cheaper than buying the play ones. I also often give them my cast offs like when my blender lid broke, I gave the kids the plastic blender cup.
Love this idea! One of my daughter’s favorite things to play with is her toy fruit and veggies, so I’m sure she’d love some other “groceries” added to that! =)
great ideas! Now I’ll be anticipating having an empty jar or box soon so I can wash/tape it for my little daughter’s use! Thank you for always sharing your creative ideas!!! =)
Wonderful ideas! As a child I remember my mom and myself baking up our homemade food we made from play-dough in the real oven. We made pastries, cookies and breads that way, and then we painted them. I wish I still had them! But I am so excited to help my daughter pretend to “keep house” like mommy. She is just nearly two, but she loves imitating everything she sees me do!
What a wonderful idea! My 15 month old daughter already LOVES her kitchen that I found at a garage sale. It came with some play food, but I was thinking the other day of how I could make her some more. Thanks so much for sharing!
Another frugal option is to make the play food yourself out of scrap wood pieces and little wooden shapes from the craft store. My husband and I have made and painted apples, cherries, oranges, pasta, cake, lollipops, etc. All painted and sealed with childsafe product. Use your imagination! You can also make your own felt food pieces, and we have a couple that were actually meant to be chrisas ornaments, and are in use in our kitchen set. I really like my daughters playing with “real” food, just like the kind we get at our farm share
What did you use for the paint and sealant? I’ve been looking into making some blocks, but haven’t been sure what to use.
A simple and effective idea, thanks!. Why did I bother buying those little ‘fake food’ boxes? They just got crushed up and thrown away anyway.
Did you buy or make the little kitchen?
I bought the kitchen for her second birthday. It’s the Educo My Creative Cookery kitchen set.
I love this kitchen! Would it be too small for my almost four year old?
I really dislike our huge pink plastic Barbie kitchen – but it was $5 at a garage sale and has definitely served its purpose for the time being.