When we lived in London we lived in the smallest flat ever. The smallest, but the most beautiful. A Victorian town house on a leafy street in the oh so trendy Clapham Old Town converted into flats. Beautiful wooden floors, high ceilings and the most gorgeous belfast sink in our teeny kitchen.
It was billed as a two bedroom flat, but in reality it was a bedroom and a half. I swear that the letting agent breathed a sigh of relief when he saw we were a couple walking up to him rather than a couple of mates wanting to flat share because whoever got the “half” bedroom would have gotten the short end of the stick.
It was barely big enough to swing a cat in, let alone house a bed and a wardrobe.
But still, we were a young couple who would be sharing a bedroom so it didn’t matter to us, we excitedly put our claim on the flat, sending money over and delighting in the fact that soon we’d be moving out of our house shares into a little love nest. Despite a couple of hiccups with the flat being offered to someone else whilst we had already given our deposit, we moved in six weeks later.
And we loved it, every single nook and cranny was ours. We filled it with tales of the adventures we had had together, we planned holidays, we schemed, we sat, most of all it was just our space. Perfect for the two of us.
And then…
Then came the unexpected.
We came back from a trip around South America, heady with the excitement that we were now engaged with a wedding to plan, happy to see the cat once again. And I was pregnant.
Our beautiful, trendy, couple perfect flat needed to expand to fit another human.
The baby will be small – we said.
He won’t take up that much room – we said.
Surely the baby won’t need that much stuff – we said.
Of course we were wrong. Anyone who has ever had a baby, particularly your first baby, knows that you need any product that simply says the word “baby” on it.
So we did. We squeezed everything in.
Just.
And then realised that we had nowhere to put any of our own stuff.
Our wardrobe became the hiding place for any little bits of baby crap essential and our own stuff slowly got edged out.
I was despairing.
Here we were with this new tiny baby who took up ALL THE ROOM. And the flat wasn’t that big to start with. What we needed was an innovative wardrobe design that would work with our space, no matter how big or small. A fitted wardrobe that would be big enough for all of our stuff.
The baby’s included.
The problem is that most wardrobes don’t take into account you live in the trendy cool flat in the middle of trendy Clapham, where you head up to the Common on sunny days or bask in the pub garden (with the pram) outside The Sun eating trendy food like beetroot chips….
You need to think outside the box and use the space you have wisely. It needed to follow through from the wonderful storage system that was installed in our living area that ran the length of the room and basically looked like a library.
Creativity needed to be unleashed and designs needed to flow.
Practical and pretty.
Sometimes, somethings, just need to be bespoke for you.
And then of course, the unthinkable happens, you get your house perfect and your husband calls you to tell you that now everything is just right it’s time to move to Dubai and go through it all again…