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Tuesday, October 29, 2013

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Nine Reasons for a Changing Station

If you dropped by my home for a visit, I could give you a full tour without ever getting you inside the door. My studio condo really is that small. Well, okay, there is one exception: the bathroom. You can’t see my bathroom from the front door. (And with a kid that has yet to learn what a closed bathroom door means, that’s a good thing!)

But lately, I’ve been making a special effort to include the bathroom in tours of my home. Why? The changing station.

Imagine: you are in Target and you suddenly realize your little sweetie-pie isn’t smelling so sweet. What do you do? Head to the bathroom and the nifty fold-down changing table, of course. Whoever invented those things was a genius, I tell you. Ever tried to change a diaper in a bathroom that doesn’t have one? Not pretty.

Sure, your house isn’t Target, but let me tell you nine reasons why you might want to consider putting one of those fold-down changing stations in your bathroom, too.

  1. Space. Oh, and did I mention space? I’m not telling you anything new when I say that baby things take up a lot of room. Even if you are living simply or abide by minimalistic decorating themes, chances are you’ve grumbled every now and then about how much stuff your baby seems to require.A changing table can easily be one of the larger items and some families manage to do without by changing diapers on the bed or floor. But cloth diapering is so much easier if you have an established area for necessary supplies. With the fold-down station, the only space I had to say good-bye to was on my wall.
  2. Convenience to the toilet. Who wants to be walking through the house with a loaded diaper on your way to shaking or spraying the poop off in the toilet? The closer to the toilet, the safer.
  3. Convenience to the sink and shower. We’ve all had those times when a wipe (or a whole pile of wipes) won’t clean quite as much as you want. When that time comes, it is super simple to take two steps to bathe that baby bottom in the sink or the bathtub. Plus, if you just use water with your cloth wipes, you can use the faucet to get them perfectly wet (and warm!).
  4. Contain the stink. If you are going to battle bad smells, you might as well battle them in the room where you battle other bad smells.
  5. Contain the “yucky”. No one likes to have multiple run ins with curious kids about off-limit areas. Putting the changing table (and diaper pail) in my bathroom consolidates two off-limit areas into one.
  6. Reinforce some basic principles of potty-training. I’m just barely gearing up for potty training, but so many “how-to” articles talk about various ways to show your child that the toilet is the place for Numbers 1 and 2. Changing diapers in the bathroom is a great way to reinforce that.
  7. Safe work space. Maybe it is just me, but I always seem to have a problem with small kicking legs or flailing arms coming perilously close to the dirty diaper while I am finishing up with wipes. I have my changing station installed over my commode and with the toilet lid down, it provides a safe space for me to quickly put the diaper out of harms way.
  8. Establishes a routine. It isn’t all that often that we need to change a diaper in a public restroom, but I’ve noticed it has gotten much easier since I switched to using the folding changing station in our home. It is much more familiar to both me and my son and so things go much more smoothly. (Although, I do have to admit to a bit of snobbishness now… I like my wall unit so much more than most I come across.)
  9. The space is designated. This may be a problem only in our house, but it is uncanny how a flat surface collects stuff… even the changing table! But because my changing station has to be returned upright for normal use of our bathroom, it doesn’t have time to collect stuff.
Bio: Becka Olson lives in Southern California and cloth diapers her infant daughter, three year old son, and thirty-something husband. Sharing a small home makes every day another day to innovate.


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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I've thought about this before. Can you give details on what kind you installed?

lunachick265 said...

I've been considering getting one for my next baby! Do you have any recommendations for a wall-mounted unit that is slightly more attractive than the standard beige plastic and that doesn't cost upwards of $200?

Meg W said...

I don't suppose you have a photo (or, better yet, design specs) of this mythically, magical folding wall unit? We live in a condo and while the space over the toilet is spoken for, the spot across from it looks mighty handy for just such a purpose when our first little one makes its debut in February!