Tag: city living

Prepping Your Small Living Space for the Arrival of a Baby

When my husband and I moved into our one bedroom, city apartment, we were not thinking about having children there. It was all the space we needed, just the two of us and our Labrador retriever, but adding another human into the mix was not something we thought about until we saw that second line on the pregnancy test. Ready or not here I come, baby seemed to be saying, and since moving wasn’t an option right away, we set to making room in our little home for our precious new addition.

Let me just say, it has not been easy. Our apartment felt crowded before, just with our own belongings, clothes, computers, kitchen supplies, and music equipment, but we’ve found a few things to help us make it work.

1. Abandon the conventional 

We do not have room for a dresser, and our wardrobe has limited space. Finding places for our own underclothes and pajamas, for example, was a challenge to begin with. We started by storing our underclothes in baskets beneath our nightstands, but I found that baskets can be horrible for storing clothes, because it just ends up in a massive tangled pile. I made dividers using cardboard and fabric to organize the contents of our baskets, and the system works well enough for us. Now, baby has her own set of baskets with dividers, too.

2. Utilize vertical space 

Shelves, Closet hangers, and wall and door hooks are all excellent options for organizing your small space. That said, if you are living in rented accommodation, sometimes you are limited as to what will work for you in this category. Such things as free-standing shelves or coat hangers may make good use of a corner, while pocket organizers or hanging shoe organizers may maximize storage in a closet or on a door. I use pocket organizers on our wardrobe door to store various small items, like baby’s hats, socks, booties, and bibs.

3. Allocate extra uses for otherwise one purpose spaces 

My friend suggested putting our laundry basket in the shower. This won’t work for us, as the laundry bin we have is fabric and would be destroyed if we did that, but if you have a plastic laundry bin, the shower is a great place to store things when not in use. You can also store cookie sheets in the oven (but whatever you do DO NOT store anything that is not oven safe in the oven. I had a roommate do this once without notifying me, and the result was melted plastic and a fire in our oven.

4. Don’t underestimate the space available under the bed 

Under the bed is a fantastic location for baskets, rolling storage containers, suit cases, and random items that you do not need to access regularly. Use the hardest-to-get-to places, such as the middle area or under the head of your bed, to store things that you don’t often need, and use the edges for things you use daily. I have a line of baskets beneath the foot of our bed that I can pull out throughout the day to access baby clothes and cloth diapers, and find that it works very well. If you don’t have much space under your bed, consider getting risers to lift it a few inches higher and give you more room to tuck things beneath.

5. Declutter! 

I didn’t know how wonderful it can be to get rid of unnecessary stuff until I moved into such a small space. Finding things I can donate or throw away is like finding buried treasure for me now days. Along with this is avoiding collecting more things than you need (I’m preaching to myself here!). Babies really don’t need as much stuff as the industry would have you believe. If you’re making a baby registry, add only the essentials, and leave out anything that seems gratuitous. You will thank yourself later when there are less things to put away.

6. Rearrange the furniture 

Sometimes we take it for granted that whatever layout we currently have is the best one, but moving things around may offer just the opportunity you need to make better use of the space you have. We decided to move our bed into the corner when we brought our baby’s cot into our room, and it’s been a great improvement.

7 Identify spaces that could be put to better use 

Got a narrow open area between the toilet and the wall? You may be able to find a shelf to fit. Got a suitcase stored under the bed that’s currently empty? Find something you can put inside of it. Maybe you have some room on top of the fridge or microwave that could be useful. Look around your home and find places that could serve you better in terms of storage, perhaps with the addition of a shelf, basket, or hook.

8 Identify specific places for particular things 

Life in a tiny apartment can feel chaotic, and unfortunately, that can get a whole lot worse with the arrival of a baby (envision me frantically digging through a drawer while my newborn is screaming in the background). Sometimes I feel like no matter how hard I try to organize things, everything just ends up in random piles. Combat this problem by naming specific spots for particular items… a basket for hats, a shelf for books, a drawer for baby towels and burp cloths, etc. This is something we are still working on, but I think once we have found a system that works, it will be a great help! That said, it is important to discuss whatever you do with the other members of your household. For some, it may be important to label these areas clearly so that they can remember what goes where. Some may prefer a highly detailed system of organization, whereas others may find that it is best just to have a general area for a certain category of things, and not worry so much about the actual organization of that area itself.

No matter what changes you decide to implement in your home before the arrival of your little one, remember that organization is meant to be a help to you, not a cause for stress or anxiety. If you are struggling to make your space work for you, be patient with yourself, and don’t be afraid to enlist the help of friends or family members. Making such changes is definitely worth it if it means less time frustrated over a chaotic home environment, and more time with your baby. Still, it doesn’t have to happen all at once, and if it doesn’t happen at all, it will be okay! As I mentioned, our space frequently feels chaotic to me even with our organization efforts, but I am trying to remind myself that at the end of the day, life is more than tidy bedrooms or dishes tucked away in cupboards. Sometimes we just need to breath in the sweet times with loved ones and thank the Lord for having a home to live in and be messy with them.

Are there other things you would add to this list? What have you done to make a small space work for you and your family? Let me know! See you next time!

A Dwelling Place for Eternal Beings: Learning About Contentment in a Season of Searching

They say moving is one of the most stressful life events you can experience. I always thought that was because of the effort of physically dragging all your belongings from one place to another, and then finding yourself in a place where you may not have the same social circle you are used to and feel out of place and disorganized. Having actually moved several times since then,, though, I personally think the hardest thing about moving is all the stuff that happens before you actually start packing, that is, the house hunt. 

We’ve been on the house hunt for half a year now. I’ve found it incredibly challenging for a couple of reasons. I suppose there are the obvious difficulties, of identifying houses that fit your criteria, establishing that they are available and within your budget, visiting them, and potentially making an offer, but then there is the emotional element.

Every house we visit that seems viable, I start imagining. I envision our baby growing up there. I think about the things we might change, the furniture or decorations we might use, what we might do with the garden or shed, the opportunities we might have there to be a blessing to our church family or neighbors through hospitality. With each house, a new set of dreams is born, and each time we have to move on from that house, for one reason or another, those dreams have to die. 

As those dreams come and go, I find that I struggle more and more with contentment in our current situation. I visit a house and see that we could have a kitchen table, a bathtub, a garden, a sitting room big enough to have company, room for our daughter to crawl and toddle safely, storage (blessed, blessed storage space), etc, and naturally I am reminded that we don’t have those things right now, and it could be a while until we do. The emotions rise then, frustration, fear, doubt, and I have to reevaluate. What is really important here? Is it the convenience of a kitchen table, or the luxury of a bathtub, or is it something else? 

“Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need.” (Phil 4:11-12).

My husband works weekdays from our sitting room, which means my dog, my daughter, and I spend our days in our bedroom and postage stamp kitchen. Baby plays with her toys on the bed, or, if I have cooking or cleaning to do, she sits in her bouncer or plays on her mat (which covers pretty much our entire kitchen floor hahaha), and I scoot awkwardly around her to do my chores. It’s times like these that I think, man, it would be great to not have to trip over my baby in order to do my laundry.”

“Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.” (Psalm 139:16, ESV)

It was in one of these moments that the Lord stopped me in my tracks. I listened to my baby cooing as I stepped carefully around her on her mat, and was tempted as usual to dwell resentfully on the lack of space, but instead all I could think about was her. Suddenly I saw her, not just as my sweet little baby, but as an eternal soul. Her days were already laid out for her by the all-powerful God that made her, days that I was living with her even now. God planned that she should be playing on her mat in our tiny old apartment, and that I should be singing to her while I shuffled around her to do dishes and fold clothes. God planned that I should be her mother, and my husband her father, and my dog her canine pal. God planned that we should raise her up to know and love him, to teach her his ways, and God willing to prepare her for an eternity spent worshipping him in glorious daily activity in the new Heaven and new Earth. 

In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” (1 John 4:9-10)

Joy filled my heart at that thought. I didn’t have to have a kitchen table to teach my little girl about Jesus, or to model his love to her every day. I didn’t need a bath tub to tell her what it means to be a sinner in need of forgiveness, or to share the Good News that Jesus took the wrath that we deserved and that we may have everlasting life in him.

“In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?” (John 14:2)

When I think about our apartment in the context of worldly standards, it is just a drafty, old matchbox, but when viewed in the context of eternity, it becomes a sanctum of holy joys, a place where God can be served and praised and delighted in, a place that may not be suited to comfortable dining, or entertaining any number of guests, but that is perfectly suited to entertaining the Holy Spirit, and all the work he has for us here and now as he intended from eternity past. I still look forward to moving, and I think we will still struggle from time to time with contentment regarding our housing, but I pray that every time my thoughts stray toward dissatisfaction, God would remind me once again of the incredible blessing it is to have his sovereign hand at work in our lives. Now is not a wasted season spent searching for a home while we are trapped in a cold and inconvenient living space. Now is a season that God has planned to prepare myself, my husband, and my baby for an eternity spent in the house of our Father. There is no house hunt more important than the one that ends there.