How To Make A Home Fit For A Family

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Buying your family house was a big deal and one you probably didn’t take lightly. You understood that the number one thing you needed was a house with space. Now that you’ve bought and are moving in, you need to know how to fully adapt your property to fit your family’s future lifestyle. Whether you’re moving in with kids or are thinking of kids down the road, here are 5 ways to make any home fit for a family.

Get Creative With Rooms

Let’s look at a traditional house: kitchen, bathroom, living room, dining room, bedrooms, laundry room and maybe an office. That’s a number of rooms with a number of different possibilities. Not every room has to be used for what it was intended for. For example, if the kid’s bedrooms aren’t very big, your dining room could be used as a learning and play area. Some families even decide that the master bedroom will be the kid’s room. That way, the kids can sleep and play in one large space.

Clearly Identify Kid-Friendly Rooms

As a family and as parents, it’s important that you designate which rooms are kid-friendly and which rooms are adult only. Adults need their space too and it will do you well through the years to claim a little spot in the house that is all yours. If you can clearly mark kid-friendly rooms, you don’t have to worry about toys being left all over the house or messes popping up in every room.

Add Storage Wherever Possible

Clear and simple, you will need access to lots of storage. Add baskets in under shelves, tables and in corners of each kid-friendly room. Install floating cabinets in the bathrooms to put stools and bath toys under the sink. Turn the space under the stairs into shelves or more storage. You can also close off some of these storage spaces to keep certain rooms looking nice and put together.

Organize Things By Levels

Interior Designer Bobby Berk suggests organizing family homes by levels. When considering what to put on shelves, tables and counters think about what is within reach for your kids. For example, on your shelves, keep lower shelves for kid’s books and toys and the higher shelves for more valuable items.

Think Smart When It Comes To Walls and Flooring

All parents know that a spill can happen at any time so think carefully about what type of flooring or walls you install. For flooring, go with high-quality vinyl floors. They are hard to damage or stain and will likely last throughout your kid’s messy years. If you’re really set on the carpet, try carpet titles. These titles are very easy to remove when spilled on. You can even take them to the dry cleaner for deep cleaning. And if worse comes to worst and the stain doesn’t come out all you need to do is remove and replace one square.

For walls in the bathroom go for titles. If you kids splash water, have an accident in the middle or the night or even go overboard with the toothpaste, tiles will be able to take the hit and you’ll be able to clean them back to perfection. You can also try painting the walls in your kid's room with semigloss paint. You kids can draw on it with marker, crayon or chalk and it will wash away like it never existed.

Give Your Home A Safety Rating

To a child, everything in your house is a toy whether you like it or not. Once you think you have your house in order give it a safety review by asking these questions.

- Is the backyard gated? Are there any loose branches that could fall on the kids?
- Are there any loose stones the kids could throw at each other?
- Is there anything within reach that the kids could hurt themselves on?
- Are there any sharp edges on furniture the kids could hit their heads on?
- Are there any small pieces lying around the kids could choke on?
- Are there any cleaning products that are within reach?

It might sound silly but even try viewing your house from your child’s level. Crawl on your knees to see what might be in reach or a problem area. If you are still looking to buy your future family home click here to see how Knowledge Broker can help. And if you have any family home tips please let us know!

At Knowledge Broker, our goal is to create an open-source of information for all our clients. We want to ensure that, at the end of the day, they get exactly what they want and what they need. If you know someone who could use our help or services please put them in touch with us or send us their details using the contact information below. And before you go, click here to take the Knowledge Broker Quiz and see exactly what we can do for you!

JOSHUA CAMPBELL (@knowledgebrkr)
Real Estate Broker
Coldwell Banker The Real Estate Centre, Brokerage
j oshua@knowledgebroker.ca
249 Avenue Road • Newmarket, ON L3Y 1N8
289.231.0001