Raising a baby in a tiny house has both challenges and benefits. When we moved to our tiny house, I was seven months pregnant and incredibly nervous about how we would fit into the space!
The Stuff
Our first challenge was fitting all of our new baby items into our home. When you add a baby to a tiny house, it’s more than just the tiny human that comes home, it’s all thestuff这是他们与生俱来的!从衣服到玩具再到婴儿床——婴儿很容易堆积额外的杂物，而当你住在一个小房子里时，这些杂物会被放大。
The Space
The second challenge of living in a tiny house with a baby is that most tiny homes are open-concept or one room. This means that the baby’s space is now in your space. It can be difficult to carve out a space for the baby that is contained and quiet.
Despite these initial challenges, we’ve found that raising a baby in a tiny home is actually much easier than expected. Because of our limited square footage, we’ve found that our situation is
- Convenient:It’s easy to keep an eye on the baby — he’s never far away and rarely out of sight.
- More thoughtful:Because we don’t want clutter, we’re extra thoughtful about the toys and baby items we bring into our space.
- Saving money:我们努力只在需要的时候才购买婴儿用品(而不是提前购买)，这样我们就不用在不需要的东西上花钱了。
5 Important Habits For Raising A Baby In A Tiny House
There are five key habits that we’ve developed in order to make raising our son in a tiny house work well. This is how we’ve saved space and money (and our sanity).
1. Use Compact Versions Of Everything
If you already live in a tiny house, you know that buying compact versions of everything — from furniture to appliances to decor — is crucial. The same goes for baby products. Many baby products have compact versions for a smaller footprint.
Related Post:Lessons Learned From Our First Year of Cabin Life
One great example of a compact baby item is a mini crib. Smaller than a regular crib but still large enough to use for two years,mini cribs are an excellent space saver.
Another example of a compact baby item that we use in our home isa collapsible bathtub. We unfold this bathtub and set it on the countertop for baby’s bath time.
2. Buy Items As You Need Them
Especially with your first baby, you’re tempted to stock up on things that the baby will need for their first year, but to save space and money, only buy things as you need them.
For example, your baby won’t need a high chair until around 6 months old. Put off buying one until your baby is ready in order to save space.
买你需要的东西也会省钱。There have been countless things that we thought we needed, but when we waited a week or month to buy them our baby ended up not needing them at all.
3. Get On A Schedule
当你住在一个小房子里的时候，为你和你的宝宝制定一个时间表有很多好处。一个时间表可以帮助你知道你的宝宝什么时候睡觉，吃饭，玩耍，什么时候你的空间的某些部分需要安静或关注宝宝。
4. Create A Baby-Proof Space
首先，你不需要在你的整个小房子里安装婴儿防护装置。但是有一个专门的婴儿空间也会很有帮助。
We put off baby proofing our home because it’s small, and I figured there wouldn’t be many places for our son to get into trouble. However, I quickly realized that baby proofing and having a dedicated space where your baby can play and roam, makes life a lot easier (even if the space is small)!
5. Use Spaces In Multiple Ways
Multiple use is a habit that you may already be familiar with if you’re living tiny. With a baby, it looks like creating hybrid spaces for your baby to sleep, play, and eat.
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大多数迷你屋都没有专门的育儿室空间，所以你需要创造性地思考你的空间，并将婴儿的物品整合到你的家里。
In our tiny home this looks like:
- 我们客厅的一个角落改成了婴儿床的地方。
- A dresser in our bathroom that serves a dual purpose as a changing table.
- A clothesline in our loft that is an extension of our washing/drying process for baby’s clothes.
Raising a baby in a tiny house can be intimidating at first, but we’ve found that the benefits outweigh the challenges by far. Like with tiny living, it took some adjustment at first, but we found solutions that work for us.
Do you have any space-saving tips for baby’s first year? Drop your favorite tips, products, and money-saving hacks in the comments below.
Megan lives with her husband and son in an 800 square foot log cabin in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. In search of a simpler pace of life, Megan and her husband quit their jobs, sold what they owned, and moved across the country to their mountainside cabin. Megan blogs about her all things cabin lifestyle atThe Cabin Diary.
Such photogenic photos! Is that even an appropriate use of the term, haha?
I think it’s a brilliant plan to tiny-house with a baby–it makes you see what’s really important. And the truth of the matter is: babies don’t need much!
One of my own tips might be this: there’s a huge industry based on…basically, guilting parents into believing that your kid will be so much smarter and stronger and better-suited for life…WITH THEIR STUFF (implying that you’re a bad parent if you don’t have their stuff). Which is all marketing gimmicks. Babies are content with just a handful of toys–and homemade ones work just as well, too! Dedicate a small box to baby’s toys, and make SURE they always fit in there. If they start exploding out, get rid of some.
While we live in a large house, we certainly did without most of the big items our friend used for their babies.
Co-sleeping= no crib. Cloth diapers = no diaper genie. Feeding baby on our laps = no highchair. Breastfeeding = no bottles, sterilizers, heaters, etc. We do have a friend that did elimination communication (diaper-free) with their baby so that could scale things back even further. A baby wrap or carrier, however, is a must!
(After 4 babies, we figure would could do it all again with just a wrap and some cloth diapers…)
Much peace.
我对你的文章很感兴趣——一想到一个婴儿住在一个小房子里，我就很焦虑。
Then I read it’s 800sq/ft!! – I lived in England, my 3 bedroom house was 875sq/ft, and I had a 6ft 3 husband, a 5 year old and a rottweiler the size of a small bear!!
I guess ‘tiny’ is relative!