Step2 Neat & Tidy Cottage Review

As this step 2 neat and tidy cottage review shows, the Step2 toy company’s Neat & Tidy Cottage is a hit. Allow us to sum up the toddler play house’s selling points and lacking points in our Step2 Neat & Tidy Cottage review–and see if it wins you over enough to decide it’s a toy worth the price.

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Step2 Neat & Tidy Cottage – Product Basics

The Neat & Tidy Cottage from Step2 is listed as made for children 18 months to 8 years old, with dimensions of 35x51x46.5 in. The cottage has an aired-out open structure, with hinged doors and windows, and is made of molded plastic, in separate parts, necessitating adult assembly for which screws are provided in shipping. Not necessary but recommended in setting up the cottage are two AAA batteries, which run its sound-making novelty features.

Product Pros:

The whole point of a toy is to entertain–and the Step2 Neat & Tidy Cottage was definitely made to keep a toddler-age child occupied and amused, with a swinging door and window shutters to pop through, a doorbell and phone that ring provided use of the two 2 AAA batteries mentioned in the product overview, and imaginary-house interior in the safe-bet form of a kitchen with a sink, a stove, and two seats (molded-in, meaning fewer pieces demanding adult installation). Even ignoring the kitchen interior, the two seats make the inside of the cottage inviting of any sort of hanging around.

Made with outdoor play in mind for both the child and the parent, the open design prevents the cottage from getting too stuffy on warm days and has drainage holes molded into the floor to prevent water from building up in the house on days that demand playing indoors, and the grooved floor is also easy to clean–naturally, dirt, leaves, and what-have-you will get caught in cracks, but said cracks are easily scraped, hosed, or wiped clean, and again, the structure doesn’t trap water, reducing pesky risk of mold exposure, among other and more or less pressing or predictable things. The “Neat & Tidy” Cottage lives up to its name: comfortable and cleanly in addition to having enough to keep a child busy.

Consumer Cons:

Nothing’s perfect, and when a product’s widely purchased and tested, it’s bound to disappoint someone. While the Step2 Neat & Tidy Cottage reviews as durable once it’s set up, its assembly isn’t necessarily quick or easy–it screws together, and you may need to have your own set of screwdrivers on hand and apply a bit of elbow grease to finish getting the playhouse securely assembled.

As the cottage was made to be left standing once assembled, the work is justified, and its size is manageable enough that it’s not likely to wear out its welcome to its space in the yard once it’s set up, but depending on the preferences (and, for that matter, number) of your kids, it may get a bit cramped a bit quickly for their liking. On the size of the Step2 Neat & Tidy Cottage, reviewing parents have vouched that they’ve been able to sit comfortably under the approximately 4-foot-high roof with their children or that their resident 5-year-olds are content to play inside it in some cases, and that it isn’t much room for more than a pair of children as old as 2 or 3 in others. In any case, it’s almost definitely going to be a little snug accommodate a child of 8 years old, the maximum age recommended for play inside in the official product information, to their contentment–though that won’t necessarily stop older siblings from squeezing inside to help referee the play of smaller kids any more than it’s stopped parents from doing the same.

Step2 Neat & Tidy Cottage – Review in Conclusion

There is nothing, really, wrong with the Step2 Neat & Tidy Cottage, review reveals, and there’s plenty to appreciate about the playhouse, hence its apparent popularity! It’s got a cute aesthetic, an airy and comfortable design, and parent-friendliness thanks to its reasonable size and ease of cleaning. As long as the buyer is prepared and equipped for the assembly to be on the involved side of things, the weight of the toy’s main drawback–its size–depends on how fast a family is likely to outgrow it. Even if its trappings and toys-within-a-toy (the noisemakers and plastic play facilities) get old, the cottage ought to still make a nice hangout space outdoors for a kid who can fit inside.

Whether a kid can fit, of course, depends on the particulars. Although it’s not high-priced at all next to some other popular playhouses out there, if your kid isn’t fond of cozier spaces and is shooting up in height, and/or if your household has no younger children and doesn’t plan to change that, you might not get enough out of the Step2 Neat & Tidy Cottage to justify spending the $.

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If you don’t have anywhere outside to set it up, you’re almost certainly better off considering alternative children’s playhouses or even play tents that weren’t made with outdoor conditions in mind–but if size isn’t likely to be an issue, if you have more than one younger child and/or regularly do playdates or babysitting, and there’s a spot in the yard where you can make a home for it, there’s a good chance you’ll find the cottage to be worth the price as a place to play.