Organization central
November 28, 2014
All our “we should, someday” projects are coming home to roost.
Personally, and this approach with my clothes is all too often to my detriment, I usually wait til things are worn to a literal thread before replacing them. The Curse of the Broken Pants still holds because of this: every time I start a new job, I break another pair of pants. (Pretty sure it’s hilarious when it’s not happening to you.)
We’d put off most of it, inertia is a budget’s friend sometimes and overstuffed rooms give me claustrophobia, anyway. LB’s impending arrival has upended this complacency. All too soon, we’ll need every bit of organization and babyproofable furniture we can get to offset the chaos.
The “we should”s are turning into “holy crap, we should really do this now!”
PiC and I react to this totally in line with our usual styles of course: I mentally rank each new idea as a now or hold for later; for PiC, it all goes on the same list. Obviously, we’re now having a LOT of discussion about which are truly priorities and which are Nice to Have.
On hold:
That rattling vent that just sounds awful but works fine.
Our dream trough sink (guesstimate: $3000 for the sink and installation. And the inconvenience – I assume installation would be a huge pain).
The shower head (guesstimate: $200-300 for the replacement but installation also looks like a bear).
Do It Now:
Furniture is the biggest thing right now, literally, and of course the most expensive even with thrifty Craigslisting.
Minimalist or no, we will be adding a fair amount of stuff. Purging the place has been productive but getting things out the door can only make space for the somewhat inevitable pile of stuff, it doesn’t get us organized with the incoming baby stuff.
1. I need an actual workstation. My current workspace is open to the public and the mess is counterproductive.
2. LB has a bed now but we need decent storage for LB’s stuff: feeding, diapering and bathing supplies, clothes, books, a few toys. A car seat and stroller that I can manage. (It’s odd that such a small creature needs about six times more stuff than the enormous Seamus.)
3. The inefficiency of our closet. Meditating on the problem hasn’t brought on any genius so we’re resorting to The Container Store, that scary heaven, to provide some answers. PiC has gone there six times, I’m staying the heck out in case I buy everything. And some IKEA, that den of somewhat affordable home stuffs.
4. The tiny closet. PiC has organized the HECK out of it, managing to find a whole pile of things to sell. Defraying costs? YES PLEASE.
The funniest thing? PiC genuinely thought that he had 3 to 4 years before he had to worry about childproof furniture. I don’t think he’s been paying attention to how much a crawling or newly walking infant gets into, we’ll be lucky to be havoc-free for more than 10 months!
So, no more open-face furniture, doors on everything!
Related: Jana tackled organizing in November
Do they still make “umbrella strollers”? That’s what they were called when my son was a babe. The two handles look like umbrella handles, and they fold up into a very compact thing you can manage with one hand and easily lift into a car trunk, a bus, or onto the baggage conveyor belt for an airline. The style today seems to be those big, cumbersome baby-carriage like things. Someone gave us one of those when M’hijto was born, but I soon found the “umbrella” thing was much easier and less crazy-making.
It’s amazing how much STUFF you have to accrue for a baby. IKEA is the savior of young parents, though. Boy, do they have cute things, and if the stuff conks out in a year or two, who cares? It didn’t break you up in business.
They still do the umbrella strollers but I need a thing that’ll hold my stuff as well, though, so it’s weighing the one thing against the other.
Yah, they can be kinda tippy if you try to stash anything heavier than a sun hat!
Y’know what I get the biggest kick out of is the young women with TWO little kids — often twins, these days, what with fertility treatments — stashed in a big old stroller, RUNNING behind it around the park. Mom looks incredibly fit, as indeed she must be by the time she’s done that a few times a week. 🙂
We have virtually baby-proofed nothing. Which saved a lot of installation time and ruining of furniture. BUT we use baby gates when necessary. As a screen in front of the entertainment area, and for a while we had it around the garbage/recycling (but he has sense mostly outgrown his need to rifle and will now actually throw things away for me when I ask). We moved all of the bad under the sink things to higher ground and we have a fence blocking behind the couch where baby-free world is. But I’ve found that creating a “yes” space for Gabe worked greatly in our benefit. Not having to constantly pull him away from things, making him frustrated/sad, and always having to be the No-parent is exhausting for everyone. It is amazing how much you won’t have to do in the end. We only ended up putting drawer clasps on our TV stand thing, and covered all the outlets. Not bad!
That sounds nice and simple! Our layout is annoyingly open in a few places but I’m hoping that for the most part, we can keep it simple. A 2-year old visiting here came through and went through EVERYTHING in reach (which was kind of a lot) so that was a good primer for things that have to be moved.
With the furniture, we were having to introduce new stuff anyway so I figured it suited our purposes to go with pieces that wouldn’t be as accessible to little fingers.
One of the benefits of an old-fashioned house, like the one we lived in with M’hijito was born, is the lack of a “great room.” Back in the day people were into privacy. And also no one wanted to heat or air-condition vast amounts of space. Mwa hah! This meant there were lots of doors and hallways across which one could sling a kiddy gate!
It’s kinda different strokes for different kids, though. Some kids get into EVERYthing, and some are fairly conservative about the exploration shenanigans. We never moved our stereo system, which was perched on a lower shelf in the living-room bookcases, even though everyone said “oohhhh that kid is gonna wreck that thing FIRST and then move on to eating the aspirin!” I think we told him twice, gently, to not touch — and he never did touch it.
That said, some of his friends were living, breathing demolition machines. 😀 How we got so lucky, I do not know!
In our case, the biggest risks seemed to come from people coming into the house, rather than from the natural kid-proclivity for mischief. Worst disaster was my idiot mother-in-law. She couldn’t figure out that the bathroom cabinet was not built-in (never having seen a bathroom where someone had purchased a hand-made fake antique cabinet and hung it from bolts on the wall), so she slammed it around and knocked it off the wall. This, within about 10 minutes of her arriving from Colorado one day. Then-DH lifted it out of the bathroom sink and set it on the floor and went on about his business. I, not realizing this, sat around the kitchen chatting with idiot mother-in-law while my toddler opened the cabinet door and helped himself to an entire bottle of Clor-Trimeton.
That was quite the little drama.
Then one day I had a friend’s brat at my house — this kid really WAS a brat, so I should’ve known better. He found a can of latex paint that was sitting on the gorgeous atrium floor, awaiting a hired painter’s attention — the floor was polished concrete finished with layer on layer of red wax — and somehow the little horror managed to OPEN IT. How, I still can’t imagine, thirty-some years later. I caught him before he was able to pour it all over the floor. But…helle’s belles!
LOL! Moral of the story, I guess, is beware of relatives bearing gifts and friends bearing small children!
I don’t know if they sell in the US, but I love my very light weight and manoeuvrable Combi Urban Walker buggy. It has a very easy fold (one hand is not a lie), is surprisingly robust for the weight and has a hood that pulls down almost completely so people can’t stick their heads in at your sleeping baby. I also used it as a bassinet for day time naps around the house. It is best suited to relatively short people (it’s Japanese designed). My 5ft 11 husband doesn’t love it as much as I do (I’m 5ft nothing). Link to the model I’ve got here: http://www.combi.com.au/combi-urban-walker-prestige-stroller.html
I hadn’t heard of that one before but PiC carries on with his stroller research so I’ll add this to his investigation 🙂
I also have a mountain buggy for walking the dog because we mostly walk the dog on trails or grass & the Combi is, well – urban. However, while it is easy to push, sturdy etc it is a pain in the proverbial to fold and would be impossible I think if your hands were painful. I have also at various times been gifted 2nd hand Phil & Ted’s strollers (ok, but heavy & hard to fold. Also I don’t think my 1st child was comfortable as a baby in the sling seat) and a Maclaren Vogue (perfectly acceptable, but the two handles meant it was a bit awkward for dog walking. It also seemed a bit more tippy than the Combi). It really depends on what you need from a stroller. It’s hard to optimise on all points.
It’s hard to optimise on all points.
It IS. And after you do all the research, that STILL doesn’t guarantee that the kid(s) will love riding in it.
Yes. My first hated, absolutely hated the pram and being in the car until she was about 9 months. I ended up using a variety of baby carriers. My second is a much more relaxed/ happier child and does ‘normal’ stuff like fall asleep in the car. Sometimes. However she is crazy mobile for 4 months (rolling both directions, scooting on her tummy.) so we’re already using baby jail for her.
As I noted on Zenmoo’s last post, this was my experience with my kids as well. We might as well have not gotten a stroller at all with DC1, but we didn’t know. And with DC2 we really didn’t need those slings.
And ditto on the early mobility and baby-proofing at 3 mo.
This is partly why I didn’t really want to spend much on a stroller, or, well, anything! But in some cases, like the stroller, LB doesn’t get much of a choice. I simply cannot carry more than a few pounds for prolonged periods so LB is just going to have to deal w/the stroller when we’re going places. :/
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Yes! We are also totally in the process of doing this as well. I told T from the beginning of the pregnancy that we will have to get rid of our coffee table (its rectangular with sharp edges and takes up way too much room, even I have trouble getting around it) and only a week ago he put it up on craigslist. We also have to do some measurements of the baby’s room and figure out the best configuration for all the stuff. We have a closet organizer (with multiple hanger levels) and room for baskets and an Ikea rolling butler thing (ah, RÅSKOG is apparently the name) and its for all the diaper change accouterments. Will be looking into the baby proofing a little bit later but definitely will need some gates (stairs) and door locks as well. Ah, fun times 🙂
Yay for getting things up on CL!
I’m going to hold off on babyproofing til I have a sense of how much of a terror LB may be, but for anything we need to get in now, it’ll be with an eye to ‘proofing, or accessibility where we want LB to be able to reach things.
Keep in mind that people have been having babies since we crawled out of the muck and while babies do not really bounce, they can make do with less than modern society suggests!
I slept in a drawer, my kids had a crib that we bought 3rd hand, my sister gave it to goodwill -slats too wide for her kids [did not kill the 8 kids who used it prior, but ok].
Our granddaughter is still sleeping in her playyard at 10 months, dr says no crib til age 1. Our granddaughter, my son, her mom, and her mom’s family just returned from Laos. Haven’t had more than picking them up at airport, kisses, seeing they were all ok and handing over keys to their car, but I am guessing from what #1 son said, not a lot of U.S. style baby gear. He did say that he had thought China was poor [1st wife], but Laos is truly poor. And aside from commenting on the dust and really missing burgers, they all looked none the worse. Although this is the woman who won’t let the baby play on the floor with the dog – humans are strange creatures LOL.
I’m thinking LB will have such loving parents that any lack of “modern” baby stuff won’t be noticed, and new is not needed for much, the mattress and what makes you and PiC comfortable.
Do not forget to check out salvage places and Habitat for Humanity stores for things like your sink, some are in almost new condition.
Best wishes and good luck.
I’ve seen cousin-babies raised in the backwoods villages of SE Asia and they do just fine, so no fear we’re going overboard, all the extra gear people are giving us are bonuses if they help but we’re not worried about that. 🙂
Generally this is all for our convenience (most of the list is stuff we wanted to do for ourselves anyway) or to make it a little easier on me since LB will be taking up a lot of the time/energy I don’t have much of!
Good thought on the salvage and HFH stores – we won’t be doing that sink for ages, I’m sure, it’s just a very wishful wishlist thing anyway, but if we could get it newish for very little, I’d be willing to consider it.
Oh my goodness, that sounds so overwhelming!
Have you done the Container Store venture yet? If so, let me know how you survive. I need one thing from there, but have been putting off actually stepping foot inside because THE TEMPTATIONS!
I did and here’s the way we did it: Looked online for all the things and went in 20 minutes before closing. Prevented all KINDS of havoc 🙂
PiC is sort of more trustworthy so he’d already been there about 6 times. I can’t be let loose though.
I made myself go in today for the one thing, and then they didn’t even have The Thing! Walked out in a huff – Container Store fail. At least that put me off looking at the other pretties. 🙂
WELL THEN! How dare they, when you’d gone to all the trouble! 🙂
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