Transitions
Although you may not frequently move from one home to another, you may go through mini-moves within your living spaces. Perhaps a better term to describe it would be a transitioning. There are a variety of housing transitions that can occur throughout our lives. There might be a time when you have to change the way your home is set up to accommodate a baby arriving, a young adult returning from college or an aging parent coming to live with you. Another transition might be the blending of two households and the struggle of knowing how to combine everything that is important without having too much. Maybe someone in your home is limited to living only on the first floor due to a short term or long term physical ailment. These transitions require us to rethink the use of our homes, to move and reorganize our possessions to meet our current needs. How do you transition your present space to fit your new specific needs?
Create a list – Begin by writing down the specific new needs for your space. This list may take some time to compile and will require repeated communication with everyone involved in the transition. Often when someone states a need, such as a first floor bathroom, they are making the assumption that you will see other parts of that need that are connected. In this example, it really means a full bath with shower because they aren’t able to climb stairs. Take time to talk through each need, discussing what is involved, why it is important and how it can be addressed.
Think outside the box – Sometimes it is hard to do this in our own homes. When the living room has always been the living room, it can be a challenge to be view the space differently. However, transitioning may require some creative repurposing. You may have always had the dining room where it is now, but perhaps the room could be changed into an office, a bedroom or a family room to fit your needs better. A fresh set of eyes or a new perspective may be needed to see the different possibilities for your space and furniture. In addition, you may find that one change may create a shuffling effect of other rooms or items. This is a part of the transition process, and though it may require some extra effort, working through this cascade of changes will help to make life run much more smoothly.
Stay flexible – Although you may have put a lot of thought into this space transition, you may find there is an aspect of it that doesn’t work well. Take note of this and be ready to adapt. Perhaps your transition was that someone is in a wheel chair and cannot reach the upper cabinets. You shuffled everything to the countertop and lower cabinets, only to find out that the things at the back of the countertops are still out of reach. Be willing to continue to make changes to optimize your space, and remember: transitioning is a process not just a one-time event.
No transition is easy, but with a little bit of planning and work, you can make your home transition so that it is able to meet your new needs.
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