The clear winner, when it came to toys, was (and still is) the play kitchen. When my kids were younger I had a rule for what toys could live at our house: the kids had to have fun playing with it for at least twice as long as it was going to take to clean up.
From a simple play kitchen in a box to a thrift store makeover, there are plenty of options for making your own inexpensive DIY play kitchen, and some of them aren’t as time consuming as you’d think!