Miss H has been terrible with doors lately! One issue has been with her sweetly saying “bye bye” to us while closing herself into her bedroom, a closet, or the bathroom. We don’t encourage this behavior (especially after she locked herself in the bathroom!) and she continues to find it hilarious. Our other issue is her running full speed into her room and flinging the door open! Even with using something behind the door to keep it from completely slamming into the wall, there was so much strain on her bedroom door that one of the hinges ripped out of it! Yikes.
We recently moved Miss H into a different bedroom in our house (more to come on that in a different post with lots of adorable photos!). With this shift we didn’t want to encounter the same door issues as we had with the old bedroom. So, I whipped up this adorable cloud doorstop, who we have dubbed “Mr. Cloud.”
It was incredibly easy to make – I hand drew the cloud outline and cut it out of gray cotton fabric. The eyes and cheeks are hand sewn felt, and the mouth is embroidered. I sewed a little pouch and filled it with lentils, securely stitched it shut, and put the pouch into the cloud as I stuffed it. Since the door to her bedroom stays open pretty well on its own, I didn’t worry about making the doorstop incredibly heavy.
We introduced Miss H to Mr. Cloud by explaining that Mr. Cloud works hard keeping the door open, and we should not touch him while he works. In the morning we prop open the door with Mr. Cloud and do not move him except at nap time and at bed time. It is our hope that by using the doorstop as a learning device, we will break Miss H’s habits of constantly closing her door and violently pushing it open.
So far, it is going pretty well. Miss H still wants to touch the doorstop from time to time, but it has been much more productive to be able to direct our focus on putting Mr. Cloud back in his place over saying “no, don’t touch the door!” over and over again. My hope is that the less opportunity she has to use the door, the less interested she will be in it.
For the rest of the house, we generally keep doors closed because the other doors lead to staircases. But if that we had a different setup, I would not hesitate to make as many adorable little doorstops as needed!
Does your LO have poor door etiquette? What have you done to solve the problem?
blogger / pomegranate / 3300 posts
Yes….. She has started running to her room when she is upset and slamming the door. Someone forgot to tell her this drama is not supposed to start until she is a teenager.
blogger / pomegranate / 3491 posts
We can count door etiquette as one of the very few things not on my list of toddler challenges…yet! This is a great idea though – totally filing it in my head for the future in case this becomes an issue
blogger / apricot / 366 posts
I have to say that since I wrote this post, I have been amazed every day how well this is working for us! Miss H has totally bought into the idea (much to Mr. H’s surprise). When we need to close the door for nap or bedtime we ask Miss H to get Mr. Cloud – she says “All done working Cloud” and puts him in the corner. Then when we need to put him in place again when we’ve opened the door, it’s “All done working in corner” and she carefully puts him by the door. It’s adorable AND she otherwise leaves the door alone!
blogger / watermelon / 14218 posts
That is genius!! Wagon Jr. also thinks it’s hilarious to slam doors… not very good especially with LMW running around with little fingers to get caught in doors. My “tool” to stop him is using my mean mommy voice… “we do not slam doors!”. This cloud doorstop is something that could easily help me get rid of mean mommy…
haha I just read your response of “all done working Cloud” so cute!!
GOLD / wonderful apricot / 22646 posts
Adorable doorstop! DS at 15 months is already obsessed with shutting doors (shutting himself in), etc. so this is something I will definitely use in the coming weeks/months.
Thanks for the post!
blogger / nectarine / 2600 posts
Ok thats adorable
blogger / pear / 1563 posts
This is a great idea! At this point Little P just likes to run into a room and close it behind him. Thankfully he can’t open the doors yet, so we try to keep them all closed.
pomegranate / 3225 posts
wow, I have not even thought of this yet as a potential issue! The cloud is adorable!
coffee bean / 41 posts
Oh my gosh do we need this! It makes me crazy with all the door slamming. It’s usually the closet door, bathroom door, bedroom door. And, it’s always while I need to keep the door open!
grapefruit / 4717 posts
Genius! Filing this away for when we need it.
blogger / wonderful cherry / 21616 posts
this is so cute!
blogger / eggplant / 11551 posts
Such a cute idea!!
blogger / clementine / 998 posts
cute!
grapefruit / 4187 posts
Our DS is too young for door etiquitte, but our good friends have a 2yo who just transitioned into a toddler bed. Every time he gets up during the night he BANGS his entire body against his bedroom door and kicks it violently for several minutes. They live in an apartment building and it’s bothered the neighbors so much they had to switch bedrooms with him! They moved their bed into his room and gave him the master.
blogger / pomelo / 5361 posts
That is adorable! We are just beginning to see the foreshadowings of door issues, but I’m going to have to remember this trick.
blogger / persimmon / 1231 posts
Such a great idea! I taught Lucy to close the door to the garage (helpful when carrying laundry in!) but I didn’t realize that she would then come to love closing EVERY door. Sigh. I think once she’s a bit older and can understand a bit more that we’ll definitely do something like this
persimmon / 1367 posts
Super cute and creative!
blogger / nectarine / 2010 posts
When we first got doors in the addition, I would hide behind them and jump out saying “boo”. It scared the pants off Little M, which he LOVED. But he thinks that “boo” means open or close a door! He’s a big fan of closing himself in closets, but none of our doors shut tightly so no accidental lock-outs yet.
blogger / kiwi / 675 posts
this is such a great post/idea. I love it!
bananas / 9973 posts
@Mrs. Hopscotch: What a wonderful idea and update! Pinning for the future, as I can already see this happening! K just closed the door on me today, for the first time I can think of!