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As families prepare to move into a “fixer-upper” home, most begin with high hopes. Boil the water, unpack a few dishes, and say to yourselves, “The dust is temporary.” The next day, your child can’t find their school shoes, the toddler tries to pull a cabinet open (that has no knob), and the sink faucet begins dripping all over the floor. A home improvement project is completely different now that there are young children within its walls.
While a fixer-upper may be the right choice for your family, it could provide more square footage, a better neighborhood, or the ability to create your dream home. The surprise isn’t just the cost or the dirt and dust. The surprise is how renovations affect your typical family life.
How Renovations Disrupt Daily Life
While renovations may appear to be minor at first, exposing problems beneath the surface of the renovation can often become apparent when exposed panels begin to leak. For example, water damage begins behind the drywall due to a loose panel. Additionally, leaks are caused by the old sink drain. The unevenness in the floors below the damaged tiles is another example.
Children experience these disruptions in a very different way. If you have developed a regular routine with your children (school run, snacks, naps, bedtimes), then small disruptions can feel like big ones. For example, a functioning kitchen sink versus a non-functioning kitchen sink for two days.
Stability in all aspects of your home environment will provide some level of comfort. Creating a budget for unexpected expenses and having an emergency plumber handy for issues such as a broken pipe will also help.
Fine Dust Spreads Farther Than You Expect
Are builders only remodeling one room in the house? Still, fine dust spreads throughout the entire household. Windowsills, toy bins, the staircase, and random places you haven’t touched in months receive dust. Young children are constantly moving on the ground and touching objects.
Many individuals undertaking renovation projects expect disruptions; however, few expect the continuous cleaning process that will be necessary to create a usable living space. As with most problems, finding a way to contain dust (and related mess) at all locations of use creates frustrations. There are several easy solutions for containment, including closing doors, caulking or taping gaps between spaces/rooms, utilizing washable throw blankets on furnishings, and making sure there is an area of the house that is free from tools. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to be a consistent place that you can predictably allow your child to rest, play, and/or eat without constant supervision.
Young Children Don’t Stop Their Routines For Renovations
Adults have the capacity to visualize the larger picture. Children don’t. They still have breakfast at 8 am. They still drink their favorite cups. They still read their bedtime stories. They still need to find a quiet place to relax after a long day. If the bathroom light is gone, dinner was delayed again today by strangers entering and exiting the home, your child’s behavior will reflect how stressed they are before you realize how much stress you are feeling too.
In order to allow for some stability in your household, you may want to slow the pace of the work, complete one room at a time, or wait longer to accomplish large tasks. Maintaining consistent routine patterns on either side of chaos will help stabilize the entire household more so than finishing a new wall ever would.
The Home will Become Disorganized
You can never fully prepare for all of the clutter that you will experience, as well as the way your family operates on a daily basis (as opposed to how they present themselves) when there is no longer an expectation of what appears to be the “perfect” family. It also helps to remember that your family will probably not continue to exhibit the same levels of patience and happiness when using the toaster as they did before.
Note: This is a collaborative post
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