Adapting For Your Family

*This is a collaborative post.

Families grow and change as time passes. There is no guarantee as to what our families will look like over the years and as they change our requirements for where and how we live changes too. It can be costly and expensive to move house, whether you rent or buy, each time our family make-up changes. So what we have to do is learn to adapt the space that we already have in order to make it work for the family make-up we currently have.

So if you think about the arrival of a new baby, you have to move furniture around to make room for all their bits and pieces like a crib. You can go small by attaching a crib to your bed which reduces the amount of space needed and there’s no need to actually get a changing table, because if you simply buy a mat you can lay it down anywhere in the home when you need to change a baby.

Of course, then come the toddler years and they start moving around and nothing is safe! The best thing you can invest in are safety gates to prevent them from getting to places you really don’t want them too. You also need to think about objects around that can hurt them or cause damage. Objects need to be high up, that you don’t want broken, soft furnishings and also make sure climbable furniture is secured to the wall so that it doesn’t fall onto them if they get a little adventurous.

Of course it is not only when you have little ones running around that you may need to adapt your home. At the opposite end of life, you may also find the need or the desire to have elderly relatives such as parents and grandparents move back into your home so that you can equally provide support, comfort and care. It may mean swapping rooms around so that they are more easily accessible. If it is not an option to move or create a bedroom downstairs then another option is to install a stairlift like those from Handicare Stairlifts UK to help older relatives have freedom and mobility around the home.

The point of this post? To inspire you to not feel the need to move or change homes but to come up with ways to adapt the home that you already have. Think – will an extension be more cost effective than moving? Do you have space that you can change to make better use of? There are always options.