Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Life with Baby – How to Manage All the Extra “Stuff”
In my last post, I promised to share organization tips and strategies on how you can simplify your household and free up more time to spend with your baby. Your baby won’t stay little for long so hopefully these tips will help you make the most of this special time. Keep all the stuff to a minimum. Especially with your first baby it seems like you’re not quite sure what you’ll need. Maybe you got a little carried away on your gift registry or you have generous family and friends, either way you often end up with tons of “stuff”. Make time to sort through everything right away. Figure out what you’ll use immediately, what you need to store for later and what you’ll never use so you might as well return it, sell it or give it away. (For example, I discovered I really didn’t need a wiper warmer or a baby monitor.)
Regularly purge things you don't use. You might go through your closet every year or two but babies, especially in the first year, grow out of their clothes so fast, you can hardly keep up and things can pile up very quickly. Try putting them in bins by size to keep them for your next baby, trade with another mom, or sell them on craigslist or eBay.
Simplify household routines. This is also a good time to streamline your household routines. One of the biggest impacts your baby will have is on the amount of laundry that’s generated! Here are a few things that helped me keep ahead on laundry. First, if possible, do laundry on a regular basis instead of when you need clothes. You might want to consider buying an extra set of burp cloths or onesies to give you a few extra days. Also, a sock bag is a wonderful thing for all those tiny socks that go missing. Get two mesh bags (like a hosiery or lingerie bag), put all of baby's dirty socks in the bag and put the whole bag in the wash. When the bag comes out, put the bag in the sock drawer and you don't have to sort socks.
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