5 Tips When Preparing Your Home For A New Family Member
Welcoming a child into a home means a number of important changes to both lifestyle and property design. Outside of the most fundamental safety considerations, there are useful changes that can support parenting and comfort, ensuring that family members are happy in their living space together.
For first-time parents, the prospect of expanding a family can be daunting. To then also consider adapting the home to a new family member is an even more troubling prospect. However, there’s little need to worry and even equipped with only our five tips can the foundation of a home be more appropriate for those welcoming a new family member.
Dedicated Storage
Even the most careful of parents will likely find themselves in a state of surprise, suddenly finding themselves with certain essential items or even enough food for their own dinner. It’s part of parenting and an occasional result of sleeping less.
Being prepared, however, simply requires having dedicated storage and ensuring that it is appropriately filled with dry goods. This could be nappies and napkins or tinned foods and spices. With a space dedicated to such stock, parenting becomes far less stressful and even the surprises can be swiftly overcome.
Expanding Space
Those who live in an already full home, whether due to size limitations or amount of belongings, may need to consider expanding their living space to welcome a child. Many parents go through this process and the most common outcomes are extensions, log cabins, and annexes. Such designs add a significant portion of living space to a home, allowing the utility to be shifted elsewhere. Home offices and hobby rooms, for example, can be moved into the garden while spare rooms are dedicated to a new family member.
Create A Monitoring System
Comfort with a little one can be difficult, which is why monitoring systems are essential. Traditionally, parents have made do with a rudimentary audio setup. However, technology has progressed (and become more affordable) allowing video systems to be more easily adopted. Such assets can allow parents to monitor a home fully, even from their mobile devices, ensuring families are kept safe at all times.
Babyproofing
A common phrase that cannot be overstated is babyproofing. Little ones, especially when they get to an age that allows them to crawl and walk, are inherently curious and clumsy. This is a dangerous combination in an environment like the home that is generally designed for adults. As such, parents must bring themselves down to a child’s level and ensure everything is safe. This doesn’t mean simply locking cupboards and covering corners, but also assessing furniture and its stability too.
Double Your Comforts
Isolating items, such as bedding, to one portion of the house can lead to frustration over time, especially as little ones tend to create a number of unexpected situations. By duplicating items, such as blankets, bottles, and towels both upstairs and downstairs, new parents can always ensure that everything they need is accessible quickly and without the need to trek upstairs and downstairs too often.