Books and the new baby

[feminist~mama]

I'm due in a couple of months (yikes!) and have done nothing to prepare for the baby. I had decided that our current house (about 1100 sq ft.) was just too small for us and that buying a larger home was our best bet. Lol.

However, the house hunt hasn't been working out so well! I've had 3 offers turned down and it seems like the market is just suck-tastic where I live. Prices are okay, but so little selection and multiple offers on every house! :/

So I'm attempting to come to terms with the fact that we might just need to stay where we are, which is fine, right? It *is* in fact enough room for 4 people and I just need to suck it up and do some hard work (and maybe get rid of some stuff?)!

The room that needs to be that baby's room is currently my office/craft room/dumping grounds. It's the smallest room in the house, which is fine, but it also has the most stuff in it. ALLLL my books (3 bookshelves), cds (a few hundred), my yarn (a 4 drawer dresser plus a display case plus a few plastic tubs), the sewing machine, the desk, a file cabinet, two printers, the coffee table from the living room, snowboard and helmets, etc. The room really isn't functional at all since the coffee table moved in (in October!).

The yarn is absolutely staying- I think I'll try to find room for the yarn dresser in our bedroom and the display case in the living room (although I'm not sure where!). I had planned to box the books because we REALLY don't have room for them in the LR, but then I started thinking about maybe getting rid of some of them. I have a bunch of cookbooks that I don't use, books from my women's studies degree that I haven't referenced in years, books from my spanish degree that I don't use either, nursing textbooks that I haven't used since school...

So tell me- have you gotten rid of books and then felt sad about it? Am I being silly? Should I just store them and decide later?

[Tradd]

I've bought and then decluttered many, many books over the past 10 years or so. NO regrets!

Since you're pregnant and due in several months, I would just pull out all the ones you mentioned that you've not looked at in years, box them up - let your SO do the hauling, and take them to the library for the friends of the library sale, the thrift store, etc. Yes, *donate* don't try to sell them. You've not got the time or probably even the energy to do that. Just get rid of them in one fell swoop and be done with it. Might want to deal with some of the CDs, too!

[MomAndOliver]

Depending on how long you've been out of school, I would at least check the textbook buy-back websites before donating the textbooks. We got a decent price for some of my husband's grad textbooks (and they were pretty old, but his field apparently doesn't update the textbooks too often). It was easy to check online what they would take, and the cash was definitely a nice bonus when we were moving.

[Megan73]

I agonized about purging all my undergrad and grad school books but have had not a single regret since. Really. In fact, I have only once or twice regretted donating something after applying the get-rid-of-anything-you-haven't-used-in-a-year rule.
I've got one child and one on the way and live in about 1100 square feet, too. I try to keep in mind that the last people to live in our house had FOUR kids.
Cut yourself some slack, though. DS didn't move into "his" room until he was a year old. If you can co-sleep or put a crib at the foot of your bed (which is what we did) you can buy yourself some time to figure it out.

[happyhats]

here's what I would do.

Wait for that great nesting urge to come over you, and then...

1. Get ruthless with the books. If you have textbooks I too would check the buyback. If you have a great used book store take in your haul and see what kind of credit awaits you. Donate the rest.

2. Get ruthless with the cds. What you don't donate I would put into a cd book. Can you load any to a hard drive and then donate them, etc? I'm not great at that, but some people love to have their music digi style.

3. As far the yarn. I would personally look through that also. Okay, so you want to keep most of it, maybe even all of it. Just make sure there's nothing you'd like to purge first, then work on a better organizing system. Is there closet space or storage space anywhere? I would keep a detailed list of what I had and where I stored it and then store the yarn wherever you need to so it's out of the way. Maybe keep out a small box of your most used. Or keep a project box, with the yarns used for that project.

4. If your desk is in the way maybe look into an armoire, or putting the desk in a closet, or in another room. If you have a laptop you might even be able to do away with the desk altogether (though you could have a station for charging it, with your printer and scanner, etc.) I would also look at craftster.com for great crafting room ideas that they have, and try to incorporate it into a "crafting nook/corner" for right now.

5. Can two children share a room? Then later on you could make the craft room/office into a joint play room. That might prove easier than trying to make it a room if it's very small. I guess that's because I'm thinking long term (toys, etc) so that's up to you.

[chel]

hey long lost twin

i'm also a RN with a ws degree and also took spanish and have a large spacing between children

i got rid of almost all of my nursing books. all were over 10yrs old and were getting ouy of date. did keep one for infants/children mostly to monitor development of my dc
i did keep a few of my ws books - mostly poetry and some fiction books, not textboks.

we just moved (dh was transfered)

babies usually don't take up much space, so you should be able to buy more time till you have to declutter.
baby just sleeps in my room and only uses 1 drawer in my dresser for prefolds and clothes

[feminist~mama]

Originally Posted by chel

hey long lost twin

i'm also a RN with a ws degree and also took spanish and have a large spacing between children

Wow! That is weird! Lol! Glad we found each other! What kind of nursing do you do?

Okay- thanks for all the reassurance everyone! My DP is an even bigger book hoarder than I am and looked at me like I had four heads when I told him I thought I might purge some... He's also of the opinion that the baby doesn't need a room at this point, which is largely true.

But we don't currently even have space for the baby's dresser, much less a swing or any of the other assorted baby "stuff" that we're sure to get... and I honestly think that the purge/ reorganization will be easier now rather than after the baby is here! I'm going for it! (Um, but not right now. Soon- honest!)

[carseatqueen]

Well, we are a family of five living in a 3 br, 2 ba, 1190 sq foot home. Thankfully our house has an open layout. There is hardly any closet space with is good because we have more open space, but bad because, um, where do you put all the stuff? We do have a small attic to store out of season clothes and decorations, but no basement.

Honestly, it's big enough. I'd love a school/play room, but the kids play on the porch in all but the coldest weather. DD does school in her room or at the dining room table. We just have to keep stuff cleaned out, cleaned up, and not keep stuff we don't need. We are in the process of building and guess what- we're building a 1500 sq ft home. Basically more closets, larger master bath (ours now is 4'x5'), and a laundry room (mine is in the garage, and we won't have a connected garage in the new house. We will have the option of adding rooms in the attic if we have more kids or whatever.

So, all that to say it's possible. I went through a time- ironically before I had #3- that I really thought our house was too small. Two things helped me. First, I have a friend that has 4 kids and they live in basically a two bedroom one bathroom house, with a small "office" space they use for another bedroom. Her house is lovely, well kept, and around 900 sq feet. Yes, there's lots of stuff in the kids rooms, but it works. She's been an inspiration. (They live in a high COL area to be close to her DH's work, so that's why their house is so small.) The other thing I decided is that I didn't want to have full closets or a full house someday when we have our "dream" house. I don't want them to be packed. I don't want out house cluttered with things we don't need. I figured the best way to start is to start now. If I can do it in a small space a large space should be a piece of cake. It seems that when most people have space they fill it an eventually they want more room- no matter how large a house for how small a number of people. I didn't want to be like that. (Not that it's wrong, it's just not for me.)

As far as books I have one shelf of books in the living room, DD has a shelf in her room, and the boys have a large basket in their room. We also have a drawer of errant kid books in the living room. I have a few boxes of books I know my DD will want to read as she gets older that I kept. DH and I got rid of all out college books just less than a year ago. I'd say keep one or two that you may enjoy and get rid of the rest. You can always replace one book later if you decide you want it. I always feel sad at first, then SO SO happy when I see all the space I have for something I do use. I've never regretted getting rid of something and I can oly thing of one thing I got rid of that I had to replace and I was still happy because I got one I liked better!

[Ruthla]

IMO, you need your office/crafts room more than a baby needs his or her own room. I would set up the baby in your own bedroom. It's fine to declutter the office/crafts room and stop using it as a dumping ground, but I see that as "general decluttering that's nice to do" rather than being part of "baby prep."

Getting rid of old textbooks and cookbooks is a good idea. I currently own 4 cookbooks. My two Passover cookbooks aren't used all that much, but both contain basic, simple recipes, and I do have the shelf space for them, so I keep them. My other two cookbooks include one that I got as a wedding gift that has directions for just about everything, including information about keeping kosher. The other is a "kids in the kitchen" DD2 received a few years ago and has limited recipes, but each one is foolproof.

On top of that, I've typed up all our most-used recipes (including the ones from the big purple cookbook I got for my wedding) and printed them out, putting them in a binder. I have a separate binder for my Passover recipes (including separate copies of whatever regular recipes are also appropriate for Passover.) If you have a cookbook you only use for one recipe, why not type it up and then donate the cookbook? Besides, it's easy enough to get new recipes off the internet instead of the bookshelf.