By Amanda Robinson
When my husband and I moved to Mooroolbark in early 2019 we were already huge fans of board games. We had invested a lot of time and money into buying and playing all sorts of different games with varying levels of enjoyment but were expecting our first baby at the time and were in a bit of a tight financial position. I had heard of toy libraries before and wanted to see if there were any in the area that I could potentially use for our daughter.
I found Maroondah Toy Library through a Google search and thought they looked alright. That was until I came across their collection of adult board games; we immediately and excitedly went for a visit to check out their stock and to see how we could start borrowing!
There, we were met by Bec, who was loud, enthusiastic and super friendly. She was more than happy to show us around so that we could see what the library had to offer. I think we signed up then and there and began borrowing as many board games as our membership allowed and as often as we could.
So far we have borrowed a huge number of board games which, if we had bought and tried them ourselves, would have cost thousands of dollars.
There is a helpful page on the toy library member login that tells me we have already borrowed over $3600 worth of toys in the first 10 months of our membership!
There have been many times that we have considered adding a game to our collection but have not been entirely sure if we would like it or not. This is where the library has come in super handy! We just borrow the game at no extra cost and try it out before we buy it ourselves! Of course, even within their collection of almost 700 board games, they don’t have every single game on the planet, but they certainly have something for absolutely everyone! We have been able to borrow games and play them with our grandparents, friends and other families. Even games that we would never buy ourselves for whatever reason have been great to borrow and just have fun with!
The monthly board game nights have also been a wonderful opportunity to meet new people, make friends and potentially find out that I’m not as good a player as I thought I was...or that I’m actually much better at bluffing games than I had previously imagined. Since it is usually just my husband and I playing together, these nights have been fun occasions where we can test our skills against other players and try out a game at three or four players instead of our normal two. We have made friends at these nights that we have been able to get together with outside of the toy library, which has been absolutely wonderful. I have even brought our baby daughter along to a couple of events when she was super little because I didn’t want to miss out!
Although I initially searched for a toy library with our daughter in mind, I think to date we have borrowed one toy for her. We have definitely utilised our membership to play as many board games as possible. In addition to that though, the library has been an amazing resource that has connected us to other people in the community with similar interests and has provided many opportunities for good-natured, light-hearted fun.