Tag Archives: small apartment

Living Room By Day, Bedroom By Night

Well, we did it! We moved our bed into the living room so that C could have his own bedroom. We have so much more floor space now, and we have been sleeping wonderfully. Wonderfully!

Please excuse the piles of laundry. There's always laundry in some stage of completion at Chateau de Novotny.

I wish I had agreed to make this move sooner. I was concerned that it would be too weird to have our bed in the living room when we had guests. The reality? No one ever visits us. If I had come to terms with reality sooner, C and I could have been sleeping better for months!

On Monday night, C slept for – drum roll, please – TWELVE HOURS STRAIGHT! It was absolutely amazing. I don’t wake up to his every move, he doesn’t wake up after I wake up from his movements…the vicious cycle is over. I couldn’t be more pleased.

C even has space to play on the floor in his bedroom!

I love that the bedroom now houses C’s bed, changing table and the recliner where we feed him his bottles. It’s like all of his things are in his own space. Maybe the part of me that felt bad about not being able to have a nursery for my baby is now slightly appeased.

Yay for more sleep!

Mentally Checking Out

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In less than a month, Hubster will graduate and shortly after that, his graduate assistantship will come to an end and we will need to move out of our campus apartment. We don’t know exactly when we’re moving yet; mostly because we don’t know where we’re headed next. Yet, I think I’ve already begun to mentally check out of this place.

Our bathtub is riddled with hardwater and iron stains, but I have no desire to clean it. After all, I’ll need to clean it again next month before we move out. Same goes with the window sills, corners of the rooms, refrigerator, kitchen sink, oven…the list goes on. I’ve given up on keeping the place spotless because I’ll need to do a final scrubbing of everything just a few weeks from now. Why bother to do it twice? Who really cares if the bathtub is shiny for a few more weeks?

I’ve also come to the “end of my rope,” if you will, when it comes to living in this space. Just above our bathroom is a bathroom shared by some students in a suite and shortly across the hall are public bathrooms. The chorus of flushing toilets doesn’t bother me; but every time someone takes a sh*t in the tri-state area, we get to smell it.

I CANNOT. WAIT. for C to have his own bedroom. Sharing a bedroom is becoming increasingly problematic the older that C gets. He knows that we’re right next to him, so we need to wait for him to fall back asleep when he gets up in the middle of the night before we can enter the room. I often wake up hours later with a kink in my neck because I fell asleep on the couch. I also wake up every time C moves around in his sleep – and this kid is an untamed animal in his sleep.

Hubster would like to move our bed into the living room. I told him that if he can come up with the logistics of that, then I’m all for it. (You may remember that he had this idea a while back, and I wasn’t a big fan. “Welcome to my home, please have a seat on my bed.”)

*sigh*

Maybe it’s better to be eager for a new adventure than sad about what will be left behind.

Living in a Small Space With a Baby

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If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you may know that our family of three lives in quite a small space. I’ve blogged about the challenges of small spaces and products that make life easier. This post on BabyCenter by blogger Sabrina Garibian was recently brought to my attention. She talks about living in a small space – but! – her family of three lives in a two-bedroom condo. Two bedrooms!

That’s when I realized the definition of a “small space” is relative. While this blogger considers her family “the definition of living in a small space,” I respectfully disagree. I would love to have two bedrooms. Can I say that again? LOVE.

What would I consider the definition of living in a small space? Muffling the sound of your sneeze by directing it into your own pillow, so that your baby who sleeps one foot away from you won’t be startled awake.

A corner filled with diapers, toys, my workout gear and a bin of C's old clothes.

Why don’t we just move to a bigger place, you ask? If only it were that simple. Hubster works in university housing and his job requires a live-in position. Until he’s finished with graduate school in May and moves on to a professional live-in position (typically accompanied by two-bedroom apartments), we have to make it work. Although our space is very small for three people, it is nice. I love our kitchen, dishwasher and laundry machines. There are some definite pros, but I’m not going to say that sharing a one-bedroom apartment with our 6-month-old son is easy.

Everything we have in our apartment has a purpose. It has to. It’s awkward practically begging our family not to give C toys or more clothes for Christmas. We only have space for practical things. Toys and baby items are scattered on our living room floor. There are stacks of grad school books and diaper boxes teetering in corners. I dread the baby proofing that I need to do soon.

We’ve become super practical and I try not to complain about our lack of space. I know that there are families bigger than ours that probably have tighter living quarters – or none at all.

The bottom line is: be grateful for what you have. There is always someone out there who has less.

Making Space for Baby

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After we returned from our trip to visit family for the holidays, the fruits of our baby showers were littered across our entire living room. And there it all sat for DAYS! I’m one of those clean freak people who is easily overwhelmed by big messes…and that was definitely an overwhelming task of sorting through clothes, blankets and toys and finding room in our cramped apartment for them. I am super excited to report that all of our big items were easily assembled and in working order, and the clothes were much easier to put away than I had anticipated. We even purchased a couple items ourselves when we got back home, including this super cute outfit. I can’t wait to dress him in this little polo and jeans – he’ll look just like his daddy

Do any of you have organization secrets for small spaces? I can’t believe how much gear a little tiny baby requires!

Small Apartments

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I think there are going to be many challenges to having a baby in a one-bedroom apartment through its first year of life. We have relatively large bedroom furniture, but decided that our bedroom is the only place for the baby to go. When it’s super little, we’d have to cook/watch tv/make phone calls/etc very quietly in order to provide a calm sleeping environment in the living room and kitchen area (it’s an open, connected area). When the baby gets bigger, it would be way too easily distracted by us out here to get to sleep. If he or she is in our bedroom, at least we’ll have a door to close so that we can go on with our daily routines while they’re sleeping. But…that also means no privacy for a year. Interesting trade-off. :-p

Then there’s the baby’s things. I can’t believe how much gear such a tiny being requires. We’ll probably need to store the stuff we’re not immediately using with one of our parents (i.e. the highchair until the baby is old enough). We had to purchase a rocker/recliner because we had no means of rocking the baby. Now our living room looks super cramped because there is so much furniture! I love the rocker/recliner and know we will need it. Likewise with the rest of the baby “gear.”

Our dressers and closet will be filled to the max. The bedroom is going to be hard to walk around in. But the good news is that it’s only for just over a year. And I know that once the baby arrives, it won’t matter how cramped it is in here because we’ll be so happy and in love with him or her.