Episode 25: Creating a Kid-Friendly Home

Hey guys!

Welcome back! This blog post is a transcript from the Elevate Motherhood Podcast - Episode #25 - Creating a Kid-Friendly Home. If you want to listen to the episode, click here!

There is plenty of information out there about designing your home, decorating your home, organizing your home, decluttering your home, but there's not a ton of information out there about setting your home up to serve your entire family- including your KIDS. 

So that's what we're talking about today! 

Making your house more kid-friendly for your kids! Here are the 3 ways we'll do it and we'll talk through all 3!

1. Foster independence and build confidence
2. Make them feel special
3. Give reasonable boundaries

One way to create a kid-friendly home and foster their independence is by putting things where they can reach. If you want them to start dressing themselves but their underwear are in a top drawer only adults can reach- it’s not going to happen, or if you criticize every outfit they pick out and make them change clothes- it’s not going to be a positive situation. You can set up their closet so that the things they can reach are the things you want them to reach. Maybe you have pre-selected their outfits for the week all laid out for them to choose one per day. Or you only hang the clothes you want them to wear, anything that is for special occasions only is folded up at the top where they can’t really see/reach it anyway.

You can also foster their independence in the playroom by allowing them access to a reasonable amount of toys and having places where those toys belong. So they can always find their toys and they can also clean up and know where to put things back when it’s time to clean up. If you’re always mad that your toddler is dumping out that 1,000 piece puzzle maybe just don’t have that puzzle stored where they can reach it. Things will change as your kids get older and are able to understand rules and expectations but be realistic with that if your kids are young toddlers. Just let it be easy and give them access to things that are okay for them to play with.

You can foster their independence in the kitchen by allowing them to reach their own plates and cups and utensils if that’s something you want them to be able to do. They can help you more if you make some systems in place to help you and help them!

Kids typically WANT independence and to be able to do things for themselves and honestly it teaches them confidence that they CAN do things and CAN make decisions for themselves within reasonable limits that you have already placed.

We talk through this more in-depth in our online course so if you’re loving this topic I really go in depth with one episode per room and we talk through how to make your house work for YOU and for your kids. It comes with audio lessons similar to this podcast format, but also worksheets, PDFs, videos and pictures. Check it out if you haven’t yet! We offer a 100% money-back guarantee so if you aren’t happy with it we will refund you right away!

Number 2 - Make them feel special. So I want to find some ways to make my kids feel like this is THEIR home, their safe place, the place that they are important. I think one way is pictures in the home. I get it some people want super designer homes and all the pictures on Pinterest don’t really have family photos. And if that’s your jam- that’s fine! And great! And probably so so beautiful. But if you can find some ways to squeeze in some family photos to the walls and shelves in your home, I think your kids would love that. Remember a minimalist-ish design advice that I have mentioned on this podcast before is that a few, bigger art pieces are more simple and soothing to the eyes than a ton of tiny frames on a shelf or wall collage. So maybe entertain the idea of how can you have a few, bigger favorite pictures especially in the main areas of your home. Then in your kids bedroom maybe you can have a few smaller pictures of them with their siblings, their friends, and the family so they can feel special looking at those photos and it makes their room feel more special.

Another thing I love is to display my kids’ artwork. I have seen these simple frames where you can kind of open it up and put some of their art inside it to display it in a more formal way.

What I personally do is right when my kids bring home artwork or make it at home- I just tell them how much I love it- I ask them how they feel about it, ask them to tell me about it- how they made it- *what* they made because honestly most of the time it’s totally different to them than it appears to me so I love to hear about it. Sometimes I even write on the back what they say if it's something I’m saving-  like in quotations “this is a frog sitting on a leaf in the river” especially if it’s like not at all what I thought that picture was. I just think it’s sweet to remember their description of it too.

And then I file the art in 3 categories- one – the best stuff I hang up with a thumbtack in their closets in their room. They both have little art galleries and it’s their favorite thing to show people who come to our house! Second category – things I want to save but aren’t as colorful or whatever- I throw into a savings box for them. I toss them in there without much thought and ONCE a year at the end of the school year I go through those before I file them away and decide what is really the best of the best and worth saving. The third category is trash- I mean we just really don’t need to save all 3,000 coloring book pages with like 2 green scribble lines. I don’t really let my kids see them but since I do a good job of saving things that are special to them, they don’t even really ask about the ones that ended up in the trash!

Another fun idea – I got this idea from my real life friend from collegeJamie from Mindfully Gray – she has an Instagram and blog and has lots of fun design ideas that include kids. But when my son was almost 2 I set up these projects that I had multicolored like jewel-toned paint and he did a little page of finger print dots, another one of his handprint which looks kind of abstract because I did lots of colors on his hand at the same time before he did the hand print, and another is just like totally random squiggles he did .. I put some dots of paint on a thick piece of paper and put that inside like a gallon ziplock bag and let him squish the paint dots on the paper. And since I used colors I had pre-selected, I personally think it looks really cool and I have it on the shelves in my living room and my son knows that he made those when he was a baby and we all love it! Here's the link to my friend’s blog so you can see a better idea of how to do these pictures! Here are some pictures of my son's artwork in our living room. 

Another thing I want to mention is whatever THEY are proud of- I try to make a big deal of it. If it’s special to them it’s special to me and I want them to know that. So my son has a few medals from his sports team and we hung those up, my daughter has a trophy from gymnastics and we made a special spot on her shelf.

Both of my kids have a “treasure box” in their room where they put things that are special to them but maybe not like the same type of things I put in the savings box that I keep for them- so special rocks, all kinds of things are in there. Several of you have heard me talk about treasure boxes on the podcast and social media and have told me you’ve set those up for your kids and that they love them so much and that makes me so happy! I love hearing things that you guys love! Here's a link to my blog posts about treasure boxes!

Another thing my friend did she said was inspired by the closet art gallery but she made like a gallery of her daughter’s dance trophies and medals and plaques all hung up inside her daughters closet too and she said her daughter LOVES it and it feels so special to her. I just love that!

The third topic for today's episode is - decide reasonable boundaries … Decide what is worth telling your kids not to touch or mess with and what isn’t. Give clear boundaries for your kids and stick to them. Kind and firm like everything else in parenting. I’d personally err on the side of set your house up to be kid-friendly and have less things that you don’t want them to touch but I think it’s perfectly find and good for some things to be off-limits ESPECIALLY as your kids are older toddlers and young kids and able to understand that. If your kid is 18 months old don’t be thinking they are a bad kid who can’t follow directions if you tell them not to touch a certain drawer- it’s expected at that age for them to REALLY want to touch that drawer at that age. So put things out of reach or lock it with child proofing locks where you can especially for young toddlers. Just make it easier on yourself. As your kid gets to be 3,4,5 they are way more able to understand boundaries and limits and it’s good for them to learn those things as they are able! This is just my PERSONAL experience I’m speaking from. If before you had kids you had a collection of breakable figurines on a low shelf, probably just do yourself a favor and box those up for a few years or put them somewhere they can’t reach instead of spending their whole toddlerhood telling them not to touch those breakable figurines.

I also think setting up some safety things is a good idea to make your house more kid-friendly. Anchor furniture that can be tipped over, tall book shelves or tall dressers especially. The anti-tip kits aren't very expensive and they screw one screw into the wall and one into the top of the furniture to "anchor" it to the wall. This prevents tipping over which can be really dangerous if it falls on a child. Click here for a link. You can also child lock the doors you don’t want them to go into, things like that. You may think you can pay perfect attention to them and always keep them safe yourself when you have one kid but I can almost guarantee you will have to take your eyes off your precious children more than you think once you have 2 or more kids and as they get older and can have a little more trust. So just set your home up to be as safe as possible for them so you can have more peace of mind. Give them *reasonable* boundaries and set them up to have a fun and safe time at their own home.

One more thing on the topic of reasonable boundaries- we want to have our kids contribute to the family and have jobs or chores that are reasonable. We don’t want to just like let our kids dump toys out and break things and never learn to take care of our home and help the family. So, I think we do that by setting up systems that make this possible for them. We may not want to have 4,000 toys out at all times in the playroom because that may be too hard for them to put them away, maybe we have less toys in general or we rotate toys or have clear labels and places where toys belong so the kids know how to clean up. We talk a lot through more ideas like this in other rooms of the house too in our Home Organization Online Course. Our course was created for MOMS to set up their homes to serve their families and let their lives be as easy as possible. We offer a money-back guarantee because we want you to really love it or your money back! A lot of online courses do not offer money back guarantees so I’m just really proud to offer that to you guys and guarantee that the course will be a blessing to you! So check that out at CourtneyLundeen.com and podcast listeners get 20% off with code Podcast20

Thanks for being here, friends! Until next time, let's Elevate Motherhood!