Family-Friendly Design
Got kids? Then get the low-down on putting together rooms that will stand up to family life — and still look fabulous.
(Continued from Page 9) By Leah Hennen
Special to HGTV.com
DO incorporate savvy storage.
Clutter is an unavoidable part of family life — but that doesn’t mean it has to take over your home. "Be creative with storage," Kelly Kole urges. Make it a design element by tucking commodious baskets into empty corners and sliding attractive boxes into open shelves. Turn a closet floor into a toy bin by tacking a one-by-twelve board just inside the door to create a lip. "It’s easy to toss toys in and much easier for small children to get them out than it is with a deep box," Deborah Burnett explains. Choose a double-tiered coffee table that can hold toy baskets on the bottom shelf, or opt for a table with drawers. Sarah Lavender Smith , a mother of two in Piedmont, California, tosses toys, books and other family-room junk into a generous drawer in her coffee table. "That ‘magic drawer’ is a lifesaver at cleanup time," she says. "I’m a great proponent of storage disguised as nice furniture," agrees Diana Medalie, a mother of twins in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, who stores board games in an antique cedar chest that doubles as a table, and school and art supplies in an elegant music cabinet. Closing doors are the key for Lora Ma-Fukuda of San Francisco: "We turned our antique Japanese Tansu cabinets into giant toy boxes," she says. "When people come over, we shove everything inside and voila — it looks like we’re clean." Add lift-up storage under window seats or in the form of storage cubes, too: Anne Lowell, another San Francisco mother of a toddler and a preschooler, recently replaced her coffee table with a pair of lidded ottomans. "They open for toy storage, so the living room can be easily picked up," she says. Be sure to locate storage where it will be used: Shoe cubbies in the mudroom, cloth-covered boxes for DVDs and video games in the TV armoire and so on. Finally, "put hooks, baskets and other storage at kids’ level so they can learn to put away their own things," Kole says. "Help them help you."
