Make Room for Baby!

I have a very good friend, Ranee, after whom I have modeled many of my parenting techniques and who has taught me endless tips to take better care of Emme. Ranee's son is almost a year older than Emme so she has lots of wonderful experience on her side! Ranee is also extremely organized and neat which fills me with envy every time I go to see her. Hoping for some more helpful advice, I was moaning to her the other day about the space issue that I have encountered lately: basically Emme's stuff multiplies and spreads on almost a daily basis and it is getting harder to find places to put it all! Ranee usually has such helpful advice, but this time, she commiserated with me! She opened cabinet after cabinet in her kitchen and showed me the same problem that I have, which is basically, baby plates, bowls, cups and various utensils in every available space on her cupboard shelves!

I went home and analyzed my shelves and found that this same issue has not only affected my kitchen cupboards, but also my linen closet and pantry as well. The problem is that I never organized my cabinets to make room for all the incoming items, but instead, pushed existing items aside and squeezed in new items as they came in. I'd like to think that if I had a "nesting period" before Emme came, I might have gotten a bit more organized, but I really didn't foresee the kind of space I would need (that and being organized ahead of time is not really my style). So here is my advice, particularly for those moms to be: Make Room for Baby! As Ranee and I discussed, it is much harder to get something as tedious as organizing shelves accomplished when you have a curious baby or toddler around.

This can certainly be challenging if you don't have a lot of cabinet space to start with, but it will really save you on headaches to come. Baby blankets and towels stack up! Babies need plates, bowls, sippy cups, snack cups, utensils and bottles galore! They will also have snack foods, (cheerios being the most popular in our home right now), juice bottles and formula or jarred foods. The worst trouble I have faced is that I have been making my own baby food for Emme, which requires freezing, but my freezer is already jam packed. In taking a look at Ranee's freezer, I also realized that frozen foods are going to continue to play a big part in feeding Emme over the next year or more, so it is time to clear out the old to make room for the new!

The ideal situation would be to completely clear a shelf in your cupboards, pantry, freezer and any other place that you use for storage, and save that space exclusively for your baby. Don't worry if those shelves look dismally bare at first! You will appreciate that space when your baby starts solid foods as that will be a time when your supply needs will jump. It is also good to have shelf space available for when you start buying those wipes and diapers in the bulk packages because let's face it, those pretty changing tables/dressers don't hold all that much.

The added bonus of being organized is that when you pack for baby, either for an outing or a longer trip, you will have everything that you might need at your fingertips, rather than spread all about. It is also a great way to help your husband find things when you aren't around as even he can't miss a delegated shelf! If you're like me and are already seemingly too entrenched in using available nooks and crannies, then I suggest baby steps. Try tackling one shelf at a time, and if anything has been sitting on a shelf unused for more than a year, chances are it is expired or expendable, so go ahead and move it out to make room for baby! Good Luck!