New Families in a One Bedroom Apartment
August 3rd, 2010 by Staff WriterNew families living in a one bedroom apartment may be pressed to find the space to adequately care for their newborn in an already-crammed apartment. Still, you won’t be the first new parents to manage despite the lack of space, as long as you practice a few tips to make life easier.
Clear Up Space in the Apartment
A good tip for any apartment dweller is to make the most of all available space, but this is especially true of new families living in a one bedroom apartment. The first tip to efficiently using space is to maximize the available space in your apartment, particularly your bedroom. Remove unnecessary clutter and furnishings you don’t really need near your bed (such as bookshelves or desks) from your bedroom to make room for your baby’s crib near your bed. You’ll also want to keep the pathway between the crib and the bed clear of clutter so that you can easily access your child as needed.
Use Vertical Space in the Apartment
While your bedroom should only have the essentials so you can easily reach your child in his or her crib as needed, you’ll still want furnishings such as bookshelves to help you organize your belongings somewhere in your apartment. However, you also have to make space for a playpen, a safe clutter-free area for your child to lay or sleep in while you do things in the apartment, and you don’t want clutter taking up all of the space in a one bedroom apartment. You can solve this problem by making the most of vertical space. Instead of a short, wide bookshelf, look for a thin, tall bookshelf or a corner bookshelf that you can slip in the corner of the apartment out of the way.
Think Collapsible and Use Up Every Inch of Free Space
If you still need furnishings such as a desk, for example, to work or use a laptop on, but you don’t want to take up space on the kitchen table, consider a rolling desk, which you can roll or fold up into the corner in your one bedroom apartment when not in use. Just keep it free of clutter.
You can also transfer this philosophy to storage, a must for new parents, as you’ll need plenty of room for baby clothes, toys and supplies. Make sure you have a raised bed and use plastic storage bins to store baby accessories that you can easily access and put away by sliding them in and out from the under the bed. If you have space under your sofa, you can use that space for storage as well. Use your closets wisely and have stackable storage units or rolling drawer storage units so you can quickly access what you need when you need it and push it out of the way when you’re done.
Living in a one bedroom apartment as you start your new family can be frustrating and overwhelming, but if you follow these tips, you can take a lot of stress out of the equation until one day you’re able to afford to move to a bigger place. If you maximize space, you can live happily in even the smallest apartment with a new family for quite some time.
Tags: Family, Family Room, One Bedroom Apartment
