I'm always paying attention to those more experienced moms because I would much rather learn a lesson from them than the hard way. I especially like to get tips from moms with many kids. Craig and I don't know how many kids God will bless us with, but we both hope we end up with a large family and I don't want to set up my household one way only to find out that my methods don't work at all once baby #2 or #3 comes along.
One concept I've heard from multiple moms of multiples (say that 5 times fast :-) is to put things were they are used, not where you think they should go. If you know your kids only wear shoes and socks when you leave the house, keep them by the door. And it might seem like good sense to put bath supplies in the bathroom - but not if you always bath the baby in the kitchen sink.
With that in mind, I've done some unusual organization in our new house. At our last place, all three of us were in the master with Craig and my clothes in our dresser and Lucy's in her changing table dresser. As I mentioned in an earlier comment, as much as I wanted to make a cute nursery, it just didn't make sense and I didn't want to always be running into the other room int he middle of the night if I had to grab a onesie or a burp cloth. It worked well for us then.
Since we've moved, I've started to transition Lucy to her own room. Don't get me wrong, she is still sleeping with us and we have no immediate plans to change that, but her "stuff" is getting shifted. The second bedroom is now officially Lucy's room. It will be decorated like a little girls' room and hold her furniture. It will also hold the office stuff for the time being. That all makes sense, but here is were it starts to get weird.
- Craig gets dressed earlier than I would like to get up. If Lucy doesn't wake up when he leaves the bed, I really don't want his searching for socks to wake her up. So his clothes are in her closet and a dresser in her room.
- Since Craig has more hanging clothes than me, so it didn't make sense for him to have to share a closet with her. This means she shares with me in the master. Plus I only hang up the her 1-2 extra nice outfits and the next size up so it is a good way for me to keep track of what we have.
- She goes to bed at 6pm but I'm not really ready to be in my pajamas by then so I keep those in the bathroom so I can change easily without worrying about waking her. Plus they are more likely to get put up and not left on the floor then thrown in the hamper after I shower in the morning.
- Right now she takes her baths in the morning, but I want to start adding that into her bedtime routine. Once it does, her night time diapers and pajamas will move to the bathroom as well.
Craig looked at me like I was nuts when I first started putting things away but once I explained why, he joined the party. And so far, it's been working pretty well.
So how crazy am I? Do you have any weird storage spots in your house too?
We had this conversation yesterday! I wanted to leave the bathtub cleaner in the bathtub (high up where no little people could reach it) so we'd clean the tub more often. Jason wanted to keep it in the laundry since we don't use it that often. He didn't see my point of view, but I figure since he cleans the tub most of the time, he can decide where it lives.
ReplyDeleteAll the magazines say to store things out of sight, but if I can't see something, it doesn't exist for me. I like to keep everything on open shelves even though it might look cluttered to other people.
I've been thinking through the store-it-where-I-use-it question as we plan for the new baby. Zuzu sleeps in her own room for naps and goes to bed at 7, so I know that the daily baby things need to be somewhere else. I'm hoping that it works to have them in our room, but I'm thinking I might try to get as much daily stuff as possible in the bassinet.