Sharing nursery with home office or with guest room -- practicalities?

[Anonymous]

We have a small three-bedroom house and currently use one extra bedroom as a home office (my husband's, for days he works from home) and the other as a guest room and home office for me. We're trying to figure out how best to accommodate a child and also our other space needs.

We're going to start with the crib in our bedroom. My first question for those with more experience is, at what point does a child really "need" their own room (or perhaps a better way to put it is, at what point do parents start to feel crowded and really start to need to have their bedroom be just theirs again )?

Second question is, how easy is it to make a nursery also serve as a guest room? I think the only way we could do this, given that the guest room is only about 10 feet by 10 feet, is to use the queen-size guest bed futon as the child's bed (with barriers around it?) and relocate the child to something like an airbed (?) in the home office or in our bedroom on nights when we have guests (we only have guests for a few nights every 3-6 months). (I used to get booted out of my bedroom to accommodate guests when I was in school, which was annoying but tolerable ... but not sure what my parents did when I was younger, like at toddler age.)

Alternatively, does it make any sense to even consider making the larger room (about 15 feet by 10 feet) do the double duty by serving as both an office AND a nursery? I may work at least p/t from home after I have a baby, and I expect I'll make (off-site?) nanny-share arrangements during the days I'm working. So it seems that I should be able to use the nursery as an office during that time. and if I occasionally have to work in the evenings or at other times when our child is home and in the nursery, I could work in another room temporarily. But I wonder if I'm completely missing some practical matter here ... like whether once the child is more mobile s/he might get up and start knocking things off the desk, get tangled in computer cables, etc. We're not going to decorate the room in baby-themed wallpaper or whatever, so clashing decor is not really a concern, and we can put a folding screen between the nursery stuff and the office stuff, just to make it even less distracting.

Any advice/ideas appreciated, thanks.

[Anonymous]

I would give the child the guest room, and also give the child priority over guests. Can't the guests sleep on the air mattress in the office? The kid isn't going to be ready to sleep on an aero bed for a while anyway.

I wouldn't do an office/nursery unless it was absolutely necessary.

[Anonymous]

How often are you and your husband working from home at the same time? Honestly, if it were me, I would make the larger room a home office for both of you and a guest room, and the smaller room the baby's room. It doesn't sound like either of you work full-time from home, and guests would only need the room to sleep in, right? So presumeably you wouldn't need it to work in then.

I think if you make one of the home offices double as a baby's room, it will be frustrating for whichever of you deals with that--you'll be tripping over baby stuff all the time and it won't feel like a great environment, and you'll have to be constantly locking stuff away so the baby can't get to it/hurt himself. If you make it double as a guest room, I think it would be pretty disruptive to a child to be moved to a makeshift room whenever there are guests (and while it sounds like you handled it fine, I'm guessing your memories are from when you were a little older).

There was a good article recently in the NYT about home office organization, including how to manage if you share a home office with your spouse.

You might also consider putting one of the home offices in your bedroom--my husband and I do this and it works well.

Good luck!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How often are you and your husband working from home at the same time? Honestly, if it were me, I would make the larger room a home office for both of you and a guest room, and the smaller room the baby's room. It doesn't sound like either of you work full-time from home, and guests would only need the room to sleep in, right? So presumeably you wouldn't need it to work in then.

I think if you make one of the home offices double as a baby's room, it will be frustrating for whichever of you deals with that--you'll be tripping over baby stuff all the time and it won't feel like a great environment, and you'll have to be constantly locking stuff away so the baby can't get to it/hurt himself. If you make it double as a guest room, I think it would be pretty disruptive to a child to be moved to a makeshift room whenever there are guests (and while it sounds like you handled it fine, I'm guessing your memories are from when you were a little older).

There was a good article recently in the NYT about home office organization, including how to manage if you share a home office with your spouse.

You might also consider putting one of the home offices in your bedroom--my husband and I do this and it works well.

Good luck!

I agree with this.

[Anonymous]

I also agree. It would honestly be too hard to try to do double duty with nursery and office. I would make the smaller room the baby's room. As baby gets older, you will have a lot more stuff - books, toys, etc. We have a similar layout as yours (3 BR, 1 really smnll) and we made the bigger bedroom into the guest/office, which worked fine. We did have to really think layout and got rid of a lot of furniture and junk to avoid the room being overfilled.

[Anonymous]

OP, I don't have much useful advice since we are dealing with the same issue! We have four bedrooms but one of them is my husband's recording studio, so I can't very well share that with him. Our guest room gets a lot of use, and the furniture that's in it is heirloom stuff, so we can't just sell it and turn that into my office (which we will probably ultimately do). We are on the hunt for a larger home but if we can't find it within the month we're going to wait until after baby gets here. So in the meantime, we've turned what was my office into the nursery, and guess where my office is?

IN THE HALLWAY! Sheesh. I work from home full time, too!

[Anonymous]

OP here...

Lots of food for thought here. it seems the consensus is that it will be a bad idea to combine nursery with home office, and i think you've successfully convinced me of that.

It will be a challenge to combine home office(s) with guest room though, at least in our particular case, so I'm not sure that will work either. some of the guests we get would be older relatives, and i'm not sure how they'd do bedding down on an airbed (especially if it's two people) in a crowded room. or else trying to fit a queen futon bed and two desks (plus bookcases, file cabinets, etc) into one not-so-big room. one possible solution that occurred to me would be if we could manage to fit one of the desks in a corner of our dining room instead (especially if we can find one of those desks that closes up completely so we don't feel we're eating or entertaining guests in an office!). either that, or i think it will have to come down to finding some good way to double-use the nursery as a guest room, and having some kind of alternate but suitable sleep arrangements for the child when guests are here. i would imagine something similar to whatever parents do when they're traveling with a child? (not sure what that IS, yet ... something like a portable folding crib?)

and just wondering how long we can put off this decision ... at what point would it really become unwieldy to have the baby sleeping in the master bedroom (which is where it will start off)?

[Anonymous]

OP - how often do you have guests? Holidays only?

Unless you are constantly hosting people I wouldn't kill myself trying to accomodate guests. Worst case scenario, if they are too elderly to sleep on a futon (or a small fold out couch) than perhaps they need to make a reservation at a hotel.

Keep the nursery a nursery. No office and no guests. Your child comes first. Consider getting a 3 in 1 crib which can convert into a child bed as the baby gets bigger.

As for where the newborn sleeps: that is up to you. We put our DD in her crib in her room on Day 1. Some opt not to do this - it's a personal preference. We didn't do the co sleeping thing, we didn't do a bassinett or anything. For us, it was just one more thing to transition to and extra baby clutter (referring to the bassinett).

[Anonymous]

I agree with the suggestion to combine the office and guest room and give the baby his/her own room.

We only have two bedrooms, so we had to give up the guest room to accommodate the baby. (Room's too small to be both.) I miss having a guest room, but when we have friends or family come one at a time, they sleep on the sofa (not ideal but not terrible), and when more than one person comes, they stay in a hotel (pretty good way to make the in-law visits kind of great now!). 99% of the time, our teeny little house is perfect for us.

[Anonymous]

I second the fact that if you're having to sacrifice real living space for guests who only show up for a few days a year, they can either 1) sleep in a hotel 2) sleep on a pull-out bed (can you do a trundle or sofa bed) or an airbed. There are some VERY comfortable airbeds these days....I have one, and it's great. It's twice the height, so just like a real bed height and packs up into a 2' x 2' space when not in use. Self-inflates/deflates when plugged in. Here's one style, just to give you an idea....just search for air mattress, and you'll see tons of different brands that are double-high. http://www.target.com/Eddie-Bauer-Raised-Printed-Indoor/dp/B000XSSMU4/sr=1-4/qid=1239161495/ref=sr_1_4/176-0541615-9574721?ie=UTF8&frombrowse=0&index=target&rh=k%3Aair%20mattress&page=1

[Anonymous]

Agree with everyone saying to give the child their own room. What guest wants to be subjected to the child's sleep schedule anyway? In any case, child gets priority - you don't have to have all the office furniture in the same room - I'm sure you can find somewhere else creative to put a bookcase, file cabinet, etc. This is just the first of many ways the child will disrupt your current arrangement.

[Anonymous]

I generally tend to agree with all the PPs......don't make the nursery double as a guest room or office. BUT, I would recommend that you don't change your setup until you are ready to move the baby into his/her own room. For the first few months, you're probably going to get your fair share of visitors (parents, in-laws, etc) and you'll appreciate having a guest room instead of a really pretty looking nursery that no one is using/sleeping in. When you are ready to have to start trekking to another room for nighttime feedings and put the baby in his/her own room, re-evaluate your situation (with much more knowledge of what your needs and the baby's needs are).

[Anonymous]

I agree with everyone who said that guests don't necessarily need a dedicated space. And if I stayed over at someone's house in their nursery, I'd feel terrible displacing a baby.

[Anonymous]

I agree about not making a combo nursery/office, I think that would be pretty frustrating.

Our house also has 3 bedrooms, one of which is VERY small and was our office. When my son was born, we moved the office downstairs to our finished basement/den where the TV is and use that space as both (granted, neither of us work from home). We put him in the tiny room and kept the larger one for guests, as we do have guests pretty often. (Totally agree w/ the PP who emphasized how helpful it was to have guest space when baby is small...I needed the help!).

Flash forward two years, and we have another baby due this summer. We decided to keep my son in the small room and make the guest room a nursery combo, using the logic that when guests come, it will be easier to move a 6mo to sleep in our room w/ us than a 2.5yo! Plus, my husband's mother is elderly, and sleeping on an airbed on the floor would definitely not work for her. When my husband's family comes, they have to pay to take a train or fly, so I think putting them up is the least we can do. When my parents come, it's usually to help us out w/ babysitting or home improvement, so I would feel ungrateful saying "um, and could you also stay in a hotel?" Plus, I like having house guests, I like it when they get to see our son with bed head and in his jammies, and hang out drinking coffee in the morning. To me that's worth the inconvenience of moving the baby to our room for a couple nights.

As to how long the baby sleeps in your room, some people go years and are totally cool with it. I lasted about three months, but was jumping at every sound the baby made and losing my mind. When I moved him to his room, we both slept better. He usually ended up with us in bed after I nursed him in the wee hours of the morning and we both fell asleep, but at least I got a more solid chunk of sleep earlier in the night. I think a lot of it depends on what kind of sleeper you are and what kind of sleeper your baby is.

[Anonymous]

Just to add another voice on how long baby sleeps in your room....we kept DD in our room, in her crib, from day 1 to 9 months. We probably should have moved her about a month sooner as by then her sleep was getting a little lighter and we were often waking her when we came into bed (she'd go back to sleep quickly, but it's not the most restful way to begin the parents' sleep....). I personally enjoyed having her there with us for that long, and she had zero issues when we moved her crib to her own room (it was harder for me). But I agree with PP that it depends on you, DH, and your child how long you decide to go. Also agree to wait until you're ready to move DC before re-arranging other rooms, especially as you will probably have lots of guests in the first months.