Photo courtesy California Closets
If there’s one thing every parent understands, it’s that having children also means having a lot more stuff—and figuring out how to store all of that stuff is a challenge, no matter how large or small your home may be. Some parents contentedly surrender their abodes to their offspring, allowing every corner of their homes to get “kid-i-fied” with books, toys and miscellaneous craft supplies. Other parents prefer to hide any trace of child behind a couple of closed doors.
But kids’ rooms are more than just places where children sleep, bathe, play and store their stuff—they are spaces that can provide years of learning, creative expression and fun.
Jeff Orr, a designer at California Closets of Central PA in Mechanicsburg (717-790-0103; www.CaliforniaClosets.com/Harrisburg), says that most parents who come to him desire a makeover for their child’s bedroom closet. Parents learn very quickly that most closets are designed with adults in mind, not children.
“[It’s] completely dysfunctional for children,” Orr says. “They can’t reach it, number one, and their clothes are nowhere near long enough to hang anywhere close to the floor, so it’s not a good use of space.”
Typically, parents’ first concern, he says, is how they can make better use of the space. But, Orr adds, that initial conversation about storage quickly leads into thinking about how the space can also be better used to help the child develop important cognitive, social and creative skills.
Any space—including a closet—has to grow with the child, which Orr says is what makes his company’s adjustable products so attractive. “As their clothes get bigger, as their stuff changes,” he says, “everything can be moved around without tearing it apart and starting over.”
Parents quickly learn that most closets are designed with adults in mind, not children
The storage systems are also sturdy and safe enough to withstand the inevitable moments when they’re treated as a climbing wall or jungle gym without crashing to the floor, Orr adds.
Most parents have a clear understanding of what they don’t want their kids to touch in the home, but it’s equally important to consider what they do want children to be able to reach and grab, which will change as they grow. For example, Orr says, if a child loves to play dress-up but is in the habit of taking every single item of clothing out of the closet in the process, parents can designate a special shelf, section of closet or box for dress-up gear; this area is accessible and keeps mess to a minimum.
While Orr and California Closets pay much attention to the storage side of designing spaces for children, Camp Hill interior decorator Dana Miller focuses more on the developmental aspects that come into play. As the mother of three boys under the age of 5, she knows a thing or two about making room for baby. In June 2010, the self-taught decorator started her own business, called Kids’ Kribs, to make fun, creative (and chic!) spaces for other families’ kids—and all the stuff that comes with them (717-579-7585; www.KidsKribs.com).
Miller aims to make spaces that are beautiful, certainly, but she wants to design rooms that actually do something—namely foster creativity and inspire imaginations. Her design philosophy is to create spaces that marry form and function. People, she says, often focus on what the color of the room will be, for instance, but spend a lot less time really thinking about how their kids are going to use the space and what they’ll be doing in it.
She learned a great deal about designing kids’ spaces from an unexpected source: Her own teaching background. Before she started Kids’ Kribs, Miller worked as a full-time developmental therapist for special-needs children. (She continues her therapy work part-time now.) This background—particularly her work with autistic children—taught her a valuable lesson about designing for kids: “Functional, structured spaces help kids feel safe, secure and know what to expect from the space,” she says.
Reading and art stations feature prominently in the rooms Miller designs for clients—and in her own home. She’ll designate one part of a room to be a cozy reading area, for instance, by adding soft, cushy floor pillows and shelves and baskets of books to encourage reading, as she did in her sons’ attic playroom in her own home. Art areas often include a table and chairs for crafts, surrounded by kid-level chalk walls and a big mounted roll of paper for children to unroll, draw on, and then tear off or roll up again, like a giant paper-towel roll.
These art areas often display the work of the young artists themselves. “I’m big on showcasing kids’ artwork,” Miller says. She frames fingerpaintings and drawings in 11-by-14-inch frames to give the space a gallery feel and further encourage the child’s creativity. She tacks horizontal strings of ribbons along walls or crafts roping systems like mini clotheslines for kids to hang their masterpieces.
Creating a clearly defined space for certain activities, Miller says, encourages children to participate in that activity because the kids know exactly what they’re supposed to do in that area. It also helps to keep glue, paints, beads and other art supplies, for instance, in just one place in the house.
Another one of Miller’s trademarks is designing on a dime. A frequent patron of consignment and thrift shops, Craigslist bargain-hunter and self-proclaimed “trash-digger,” Miller prides herself on working within a client’s budget, no matter how small. She’ll repurpose and repaint old, discarded doors and windows. She’s always on the lookout for steals, like the huge wooden bookshelves she found recently at a Lemoyne vintage shop for 20 dollars each. Guests to her home regularly compliment her decorating skills. “If they only knew where I got some of the stuff,” she says with a laugh.
A fun, unexpected, and inexpensive storage idea Miller frequently employs is using buckets or paint cans from home-supply stores as wall-mounted storage for art supplies, blocks—even bath toys and towels in the bathroom. She’ll spray-paint them to match a room’s color palette, make a cute label for each one, and affix them to the wall at kid level—a much cheaper option than similar buckets that sell at high-end home stores.
For her home’s mudroom, she built an expensive-looking bench seat by nailing together storage cubbies she’d purchased at a chain craft store, painting it and adding baskets in each of the cubbies for hats, gloves and other items. A row of six simple hooks runs along the wall above the seat for coats.
Miller also often uses wall decals to add a bit of whimsy and to help define a space. She sells decals by Uppercase Living through her business and loves their lack of permanence. “If they want to change the room, they can just peel it off,” she says, unlike an expensive painted wall mural.
Even though Kids’ Kribs is still in its infancy, Miller has her own testing ground for her designs and ideas, right in the comfort of her own home. “When my kids have friends come over, they always say, ‘Come see my playroom!’” she says. “It makes me feel like I’ve accomplished something when my kids want to be in there.”
Decorating Must-Haves for Kids’ Rooms
from Dana Miller of Kids’ Kribs
- Buckets or paint cans for storage.
- Storage containers that are easily accessible for supplies in art areas.
- Framed artwork or pictures of the kids and family.
- Roping systems for kids to hang art projects.
- Bookshelves are “probably the biggest thing” and Miller has them in practically every room of her house—even in the bathroom, filled with tub-safe bath books and bath supplies.
- Mobiles, or hanging globes spray-painted to match the decor.
- Wall decals to define an area and give it “punch.”
- Old rotary or push-button phones to mount at kid-level on the wall. (She has one in her kitchen, and her kids and their friends love to play with it.)
- Music, strategically placed (radios, iPod docks, speakers, systems, etc.) to inspire spontaneous singing and dancing.
