This fall I’ve got a new list of My Favorite Things! They’re must-haves around our home, especially now that we have a wee 1 year old running around the house. Yup you got it – it’s the ‘My Favorite Things: Baby Edition’!
One of the assumptions a lot of people make about having children is that once you have them you have to expect that all your nice things will be ruined (goodbye white sofa!) so there’s no point in having anything nice (hello house full of bright primary colours and vomit stains!! Yuck). Well, I’m here to tell you that’s simply not true. You can still have a nicely decorated home without having to Saran Wrap your child or even having to limit where they can go. The secret is being mindful of the items you bring into the home and finding clever alternatives to classic baby items that work with your home design. If that sounds like a lot of work, it isn’t, and this My Favorite Things: Baby Edition list will help take some of the work out of sourcing these top household baby items that can have the biggest impact on your design. So here they are:
1) Toy Storage Bins
I strongly believe that just because you have a kid it doesn’t mean your house has to be full of Disney images and primary coloured dolphins (no offence to dolphins). Now it’s true that children over 5 months age are more easily drawn to bright colours and this can help them in their learning, however, being surrounding in ALL bright colours isn’t the key to optimal child development either – in fact it can create too much distraction that makes it harder for them to focus on the important things.
This is why schools like Reggio Emilia and Montessori have mostly white and neutral toned walls and furniture in their learning spaces to create a calm, focused learning environment. When you pair that with bright toys, books, paints, flowers, leaves, and other learning objects, it makes it much easier for the child to focus on the item that they’re engaging with. One way to incorporate this concept into your home is to keep your decor neutral in learning and play spaces – including toy storage furniture.
These minimalist oversized paper bag storage bins are a cheap and easy way maintain a calm space and make it easy when it comes to tidying up (our 1 year old LOVES to stuff all her toys back in it!); they blend into the background and allow the toys and learning tools to stand out on their own. Another upside to these bags is that they can be reused around the house to hold plants and other items once the kids get bigger (score!).
2) Livingroom Rugs
Something most people wouldn’t think to use around kids are skin rugs, like these cowhides. Amazingly, I find these are one of the BEST materials for kids because they’re water resistant (we’ve spilled litres of water on ours and it’s easy to mop up and air dry with no effect on the skin), it’s soft on their feet, easy to wipe off (I’ve wiped spaghetti off of ours and you’d never know!), and they can take a solid beating with no signs of wear. We’ve used ours under the dining table as a ‘childproof’ rug alternative and now use it in the living room on top of the Beni Ourain as her main play area rug. So don’t go and purchase some ugly area rug just because you don’t want your kids to wreck your nice stuff – you just can’t go wrong with showing a bit of skin.
3) Little Nomad Play Mat 
These play mats are perfect for little ones that are crawling or learning to walk and they also double as an area rug. They’re so lovely in fact, that some people don’t even realize they’re foam mats. They come in a variety of colours to match your decor, are super easy to clean up, and provide the right amount of padding for crawling/early walking babies who tend to take a tumble now and then.
4) Hidden Storage
Your children don’t need access to all of their toys at once. In fact, research has shown that limiting the amount of toys a child has encourages longer attention spans, more creativity, and increases their love of reading, writing and art (among many other benefits). So lets put most of it away! One simple way to do this is to put storage cabinets in your home (everywhere) – ones with little locking mechanisms like these IKEA PS Cabinets are so great for keeping little fingers out of your stuff, they make the room look less cluttered and distracting, and it is so much easier to clean up at the end of the day, which means less time cleaning and more time cuddling.
5) Wall Book Display
Rather than displaying your children’s toys, why not showcase their books? This is great for encouraging reading with your kids and since there are now such beautifully design children’s books these days you won’t even need to add wall art. Using narrow picture ledges like these work great and you can install them low to the ground in any room to make a simple, easy-access reading nook. They also take up less space that a standard book shelf and won’t use up any floor space, which is always a plus!
6) Metal First Aid Bin
One item parents ALWAYS need easy access to is your kid’s first aid kit. For teething, temperatures, cuts, stuffy noses, hang nails, you name it you’ll be needing to keep these items close at hand. I find it easiest to keep our first aid kit within easy grasp, but this usually means keeping it somewhere visible. So why not have one that’s nice to look at? These vintage revival metal first aid bins are the perfect alternative to the standard kit and come with little internal compartments that make it easy to keep all your bits easily organized.
7) Childproof Garbage Bins
Having good child-proof alternatives is super important in a house with kids, so one item I LOVE is our new Simple Human motion-sensor 45L garbage bin. It’s amazing! Our little one started walking at 9 months, so we had to do a lot of childproofing pretty fast and this saved us a lot of hassle. I keep one in the upstairs bathroom since she’s in there playing all the time while we’re getting ready in the morning and since she can’t figure out how it opens (it has a sleek design with no moving parts at the base) she just treats it like the wall and makes no effort to interact with it. So skip the zip ties and tricky childproof gadgets and invest in a good quality bin that not only looks good in any room, but you also won’t have to replace it once the kid grows up.
8) Neutral Nursery Decor
I’ve already touched on the importance of light neutral colours in children’s learning spaces, and the bedroom is no exception. One of my LEAST favorite things are children’s rooms full of tacky wall decals (though there are SOME decals that are acceptable like these), headache-inducing bright wall colours, and way too many toys. Something that a lot of people haven’t quite realized is that it’s perfectly acceptable for a children’s rooms to look like the rest of the house (like this) and not be over decorated or filled with images of cartoon characters. In fact, until the child has a strong opinion on their room decor, why not keep it simple and add some ‘non-baby art’ (like this) in their room and decorate it in a way that makes you want to spend time in there? Bedsides, you WILL be spending a lot of time in there so you may as well get comfortable and surround yourselves in lovely things.
Keeping it neutral also makes it easier when you’re transitioning the space as they grow up – bright pink walls are rarely popular for long. So instead of repainting the space every couple years, consider neutral, timeless wall colours and furniture pieces; then make simple changes overtime like updating the prints inside their wall frames, adding a new area rug, bedding, or accessories as they grow. There are some great examples of very cute, simply styled, Scandi-inspired room for kids that can easily be updated as they grow (like this, this, this and this!). So consider soft neutrals for your kids rooms at all ages, and if you’re struggling to find the right balance, why not give me a shout and I’ll be happy to help through ArcticDeco’s Interior Design Services to pull your room together and incorporate some of my favorite things into your kid-filled spaces!