This Trampoline Alternative Should Be in Every Home (It’s Perfect for Small Spaces!)

A few weeks ago, I was listening to my favorite podcast, Las Culturistas, and found an unexpected personal connection. In the episode where they interviewed Amy Poehler, co-host Matt Rogers went off on how much he hates trampolines in the podcast’s signature “I don’t think so, honey,” segment, where they all get to rant about one thing they don’t like for a minute. 

He ranted about how dangerous trampolines can be, but offered a solution: If you can afford a trampoline and have a spare room (or playroom) in the house, you should pad the room and have your kids jump in there instead. When I heard this, I nearly jumped out of my seat — because we had it when I was a kid. My mom called it the “jumping room.” 

When I was growing up, we almost never had guests in our four-bedroom house, so my parents turned the spare room’s guest beds into a solid surface for us to jump on. They also took an extra mattress and put it against the wall, and hung kid-friendly print sheets on the walls for decor. It made for a good TV room, as well. My mom would pin our art projects and paper-plate collages on the wall, and I even made a fake commercial, complete with a jingle, to sell my masterpieces. My business was called “Krafts for Kids.” (It didn’t take off.) 

It was, essentially, a turbo-charged playroom made for maximum bouncing around — perfect for me and my sister to burn off all our outsized energy. It was a space of our own that we could decorate and get rowdy in without worrying about breaking anything or bothering our parents. Plus, it was much safer than having a regular trampoline in the backyard.

While I’m not 100% against trampolines, I’ve read many articles and studies about how ER doctors swear they’d never own one due to how easy it is to get hurt on them. I’ve owned small toddler trampolines, and now that my kids are big I have one meant for adult exercise (it looks just like the Little Tikes one, but has a higher weight limit). However, there’s nothing like crashing your whole body into a soft surface, so the trampoline doesn’t satisfy the kids’ particular proprioceptive proclivities (try saying that five times fast). 

My children, from the moment they could move, took after me in that they needed to jump around, crash into walls, and display their art. However, I’ve never had a large-enough home to have a dedicated space that could be completely transformed the way my parents did in our guest room. My rooms need to serve multiple uses and people of all ages. 

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, I decided to invest in creating a jumping room space that could be easy to put together and then quickly put away when needed. 

So I purchased a “small” bounce house and placed it in our carpeted living room. I took an outgrown crib mattress we kept under the stairs and laid it down with a buffer of pillows around it. My kids particularly like jumping from height, so they’d jump off the back of the couch and crash onto the mattress.

A guest room or bonus room would make a great temporary jumping room. To jazz up the whole experience, consider a bright comforter or using a projector to set the tone. Personally, I’ve been loving this projector, which makes the whole room look like we’re immersed in the northern lights. We love turning it on when we’re watching concerts as well. (It really makes us feel like we’re at Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour!)

If you’re putting your house on the market, having a room dedicated to your kids having fun with a mattress against the wall and sheets hanging from them does not constitute good staging. So if you’re selling your house or just looking for a non-permanent “jumping room,” you may want to follow my DIY version that can be put away when folks come to look at your house. 

But if you’re looking at a home with maybe one more bedroom than you have per person/kid, instead of designating it an office space or guest bedroom, consider giving it a different function — a dedicated playroom where kids have the space to have fun and can be a little rowdier than in other areas of the house that might have more breakable things. 

Creating a space for your kids to be their own silly, energetic selves will give your whole family so many good memories.