Best use of Space in home?

[NicciLovesSundays]

Hi All
Having my first child in September and thinking about the best way to use space in our 3 bedroom house. We moved in a year ago and still havent figured out the best way to use the rooms. We have 2 double bedrooms and one single bedroom.

Currently thinking the small room will become the nursery and have a single bed, cot and some sort of shelving unit or chest of drawers. One double room for me and husband and one double room as a guest room. Right now we have loads of stuff in the little room that needs to be rehomed eg craft supplies, paperwork, photograph albums etc and we also use wardrobes in both of the double rooms - one wardrobe has all of our normal day to day clothes and the other has our hiking gear, coats and beach holiday clothes.
Q - do you fit all your clothes/shoes/personal items into the bedroom you sleep in or do you use another space as well?
Q- do you keep any stuff in a guest room if you have one or is it just a space for your visitors?

Feeling a bit overwhelmed about where to begin but at the minute every room feels cluttered.

I've never taken anyones needs into consideration that doesn't live with me so I would make the big room your child's bedroom and the small one for guests.

@Seeleyboo It would be really difficult (possibly impossible) to fit a double bed into the small room. In a few years when we replace our sofa we will probably get a sofa bed for the living room.

Make the double the nursery. I made the mistake of making the single room the nursery and keeping the double as a spare. My 3 year old could really do with the bigger room now as my living room is inundated with toys (plus what fits in the limited space in his room) but he doesn't want to swap as he's very attached to his little room!!

It depends a lot on how much you actually use your guest room.

A comfortable chair for you is more of a priority than I'd expected in a nursery. If you are BF it is helpful to have one that is not too deep so you are not slouched, and it's good if you can put your feet flat on the floor (or in my case, on a stack of encyclopedias!)

What age did you have your children in the nursery from?

9m and 13m at night.

Actually our youngest went straight from our bedroom to sharing bedroom2 with the older one. With hindsight it would have made more sense to keep the small room as a study. I really doubt we had any overnight guests in that small window between DC1 moving into the nursery and then moving into bedroom 2 before DC2 arrived.

Think about how the space will work a few years down the line too. The small room is fine for a baby or toddler but you'll probably want a bigger room for them as they get a bit older.

I've recently been working on decluttering and I'm sure you'd be amazed at how much stuff you can get rid of that you don't actually use. We also use our loft for storage of stuff that we want to keep but don't use all that often (winter clothes, suitcases etc) and that frees up space too.

@funnystory Ive been reluctant to put anything into the loft as I know how dependent you can easily become on that space but im starting to think there might be a few things that will have to go there, not 100% decided yet.

I have been thinking over your comments and had a chat with my husband and think you are probably right to put the baby straight into the larger room when the time comes for them to leave our bedroom.

If we have guests, we can always sleep in with the baby and the guests can take our bedroom until we replace our sofa with a sofa bed.

That also gives us the option of turning the smaller bedroom into a walk in wardrobe.

Thanks for updating OP, have fun doing the baby's room.

We kept the other bedrooms' wardrobes for general stuff when ours were babies. Their clothes and cloth nappy stuff all just lived in a big chest of drawers apart from a handful of dresses for DD. In fact we had one chest of drawers for all their stuff combined for years. It even doubled as a changing unit. It was huge and a bit ugly but the world's most efficient storage!

Now i just have the small task of planning a built in wardrobe. Hopefully I wont have to do the assembly :)

How often do you have guests, and are they elderly aunts needing a certain standard of accommodation, or teens who can crash on the sofa?

I’d also likely put the baby in the larger room tbh. Though ours is now 18m and still in her “temporary” room - piled high with boxes - while we renovate. She mainly plays in the living room, and her clothes are in our room because that’s where we dress her.

We really dont have people to stay that often and none of them have particularly challenging needs.

If you hope for a second child in that house in future I would make the small one a nursery and keep the double as a guest/extra storage room. Baby doesn't go into their own room for months anyway and means there is somewhere comfy for visiting family/friends in the meantime. you can always move them when they need more space at 2/3 years old.

Plus in future either one of your children will have the big and the small room, or will share the big one.

We cleared out a LOT of our own stuff before our first child and it was the best thing of ever did, got rid of the junk we'd had since at uni, reduced our clothes etc. In anticipation of having less room once we started building up kids stuff. But it's been a transitional journey and now, 5 years down the line with two small children we have cut our own things down even more, and only have our clothes in the one double wardrobe and chest of drawers and under the bed in our bedroom. We do keep season clothes like winter coats in the loft.

Not sure at this stage if we will have a second child but if we do we want them to share a bedroom so trying to plan with that in mind.