Throughout my pregnancy we have been planning to move to a bigger place before the baby comes. We decided it would be best to have a second bedroom which I imagined would be a combination guest room and baby room. Both sets of grandparents will be visiting in the weeks after the birth and I really wanted a room for them to be a bit more comfortable in. The baby will be in our room early on regardless of the status of occupancy of the guest room, but eventually the plan was to set up the crib or pack and play in there and let Lego have her own closet space and everything else.
After giving notice of our intention to vacate our current one bedroom place and spending the better part of a month touring apartments in various neighborhoods, worrying over the financial aspects of moving (application fees, first and last month's rent plus pet deposit, moving van rental, and regular bills and saving up for Lego's arrival, all before getting any of our old security deposit back), furnishing another whole room and the logistics of moving on a budget when I'm 6+ months pregnant, stressing about which apartment we didn't exactly love to choose, and getting nervous about when we would be able to move in, we finally decided to throw the whole idea out the window. We withdrew our notice of vacancy and luckily our new landlords (who just bought the building we have lived in for the past 2 years) don't seem to mind a bit.
Just as things were coming to a head- we had a week to figure everything out and had just gotten word that both places we had applied for had been rented to other people- I shared with Dan three stories of families making small spaces work for them. We have come to the conclusion that if they can do it, so can we. An 800 square foot apartment is plenty of space for three (or two and half) people compared to what many people have!
One of my elderly clients has grandchildren who live in a 250 square foot yert in Alaska, off the grid. They have two small children (my client's great grandchildren) who were born into life in a yert off the gird. The couch is a futon that doubles as the parent's bed and the kids have a loft bed above them. The kitchen table is a trunk in which the mother keeps her clothes and other storage, and each family member has a drawer in the single dresser. They carry their water up from the stream every day and purify all of it before drinking. When it freezes, they use ice and snow. When the kids were babies, their cloth diapers were washed in the stream until it froze- then they reluctantly switched to seventh generation disposables. Compared to that, Dan and I have it super easy, and more than enough space!
Our challenge will be mainly organization. We will need to reorganize and get rid of some things in order to fit baby stuff and generally make this space more open and comfortable, and then we will have to be strict with ourselves to keep it neat and put away! Neither of us are very good at being organized and tidy, but we agree we would like to develop better habits before baby Lego gets here. We will keep the amount of baby furnishings (swing, bouncer, changing table, etc.) to a minimum to help maximize space, and instead of getting her her own dresser I will start with clearing out one or more of my dresser drawers. New babies don't need much stuff, all that is mostly for parents anyway. We have a few other ideas as well, but anyone who has input on making small spaces work by all means leave a comment! Please!
I do regret not being able to provide our parents and in-laws with the privacy and comfort a second bedroom could offer, but the weight that lifted off our shoulders when we decided to stay put for now makes that sacrifice more than worth it. Yeah, my parents' comfort was definitely worth giving up in favor of my own peace of mind!
Now, away with me. I'm off to develop better habits!
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