Family Homes

My husband and I have really different parenting styles: he tends to be really rules-oriented, while I take a less disciplined approach. Do you have any tips on meeting in the middle?BethDear Beth,First of all, I think it’s great that you have different parenting styles and that is a real strength in terms of allowing your kids to experience and understand two different perspectives and approaches to problems that they will one day solve for themselves.

How do we incorporate allowances — and what, if any, alignment should the money have with their chores or other responsibilities? JennyDear Jenny,I have really struggled over this one too, particularly when I’m tired on a Sunday, my daughter hasn’t been the best kid in the world that day, and she says, “You haven’t given me my allowance yet!

This piece was created for Cubby, our weekly newsletter for families at home. Want more? Sign up here for a weekly splash of fun and good ideas for families with kids. Join us over on Instagram for more! Living outside the United States changed me and my family life in both mundane and profound ways. Like many Americans abroad, we adopted local and regional foods, festivals, and language in our new home of Singapore.

This piece was created for Cubby, our weekly newsletter for families at home. Want more? Sign up here for a weekly splash of fun and good ideas for families with kids. Join us over on Instagram for more! My son Luke loves bath time. And after bath, he loves to streak from the tub to his bedroom — with or without his Prince George-inspired bathrobe. This nightly cuteness turned my hallway into a Slip and Slide, and not in a good way.

I need help and ideas on how to get kids involved in helping around the house — especially because we’re all here all the time.Michelle(Hi all! I’m working behind the scenes to get ahead and taking some vacation with my daughter – three of her friends are coming for the weekend this weekend! – so I’m re-running a few of the most READ Q&A’s from the past year. See you in a few weeks!

Going on vacation is supposed to be relaxing and fun. But there is always so much to worry about before you leave — and even while you’re away! You need to check your luggage to make sure you packed everything you meant to. Then when you’re actually on vacation, you are worrying about your house and your pets, hoping that they are being good for the sitter. And how many times have you stressed about turning the stove off before you left the house? Did you turn it off?

This piece was created for Cubby, our weekly newsletter for families at home. Want more? Sign up here for a weekly splash of fun and good ideas for families with kids. Join us over on Instagram for more! Looking to create a resort-like backyard but can’t squeeze an in-ground pool into the plans? Worse yet: maybe your pool options have sold out already. You might want to take a trip down to the local farm supply store to check out their selection of stock tanks.

This piece was created for Cubby, our weekly newsletter for families at home. Want more? Sign up here for a weekly splash of fun and good ideas for families with kids. Join us over on Instagram for more! “Mama, I’ll be able to see my friends’ happy faces again!” my 5-year-old exclaimed when I told him his school planned to instate a mask-optional policy outdoors.

Keeping working from home and virtual learning presents undeniable organizational challenges for parents. Luckily, Clea Shearer and Joanna Teplin — the dynamic duo also known as The Home Edit, Instagram’s beloved home organizers — shared their easy, doable tip for helping to keep clutter at bay in shared spaces.The pair dished on how to keep home classrooms and offices well-organized, even if those two spaces are now one and the same.

You often have to get creative with the way you lay out and allocate your square footage in a smaller home. Every nook and cranny counts, and for Ella Hall, founder of Stitchroom, the cluttered problem corner in her bedroom actually became the solution to her home’s lack of space for a dedicated nursery. “When I found out I was pregnant, I knew I needed a spot for the baby, and we have limited space in our Brooklyn apartment,” says Hall.

Amazon Prime Day isn’t the only major sale happening this week. Some of your favorite retailers and brands are getting in on the fun by offering huge savings of their own on home and kitchen essentials, TVs and tech, and large and small appliances. Add Prime Day to an already sale-heavy week, and you’ve got a perfect storm of *epic* deals. To help you find the best stuff fast, we’ve compiled all the competing Prime Day sales here.

This piece was created for Cubby, our weekly newsletter for families at home. Want more? Sign up here for a weekly splash of fun and good ideas for families with kids. Join us over on Instagram for more! Summer camp — it’s downright magical. The memories of sleeping in tents, racing to plunge in cold ponds, and learning to ride horses among towering pine trees are the stuff of novels. And for some reason, those friendship bracelets were more powerful at creating BFFs in IRL.

This piece was created for Cubby, our weekly newsletter for families at home. Want more? Sign up here for a weekly splash of fun and good ideas for families with kids. Join us over on Instagram for more! The day has arrived — a day of unbelievably good deals, especially for parents and caregivers shopping for their kids. Amazon Prime Day kicked off this morning, June 21, and will run through tomorrow, June 22.

This piece was created for Cubby, our weekly newsletter for families at home. Want more? Sign up here for a weekly splash of fun and good ideas for families with kids. Join us over on Instagram for more! When I close my eyes and conjure the best elements of my childhood summers, there’s one beloved activity that bubbles up again and again. No, it’s not the Slip n’ Slide. Or the waterpark (although those are totes fun). It’s fort-building.

We’ve always had a car sickness problem — would love help with that!RobinDear Robin, We’re about to head out to a wedding in Iowa this week, so your question is perfect. With plane travel and a rented car, we’re going to be logging some long travel hours and my daughter, Ursula, regularly dislikes car rides (though she’s never been a thrower-upper).

When we decided to sell our three-bedroom, 2,100-square foot ranch, my husband and I had a few non-negotiables for our next home. We wanted a two-level house and a somewhat open main-floor layout. We’re not fixer-uppers, so a recently renovated kitchen was a must. A fenced-in backyard would be nice, we decided, and so would a finished basement. One thing that wasn’t on our must-have list? More square feet.

This piece was created for Cubby, our weekly newsletter for families at home. Want more? Sign up here for a weekly splash of fun and good ideas for families with kids. Let me paint you a pre-pandemic picture: our family of three is walking through Disney World amidst the swell of a late-summer heat wave. We wait in line for hours to see the gliding princesses and slinking villains, all clad in their (sweaty-looking) costumes.

Cottagecore, the No. 1 decor trend on TikTok for two years running, is marked by its vintage-inspired shabby-chicness. Floral wallpaper, patchwork quilts, doilies, and other whimsical, woodlands-y accessories (think: mushroom decor and dried flowers), which a few years ago you might have only found in a Hobbit hole or a very cute bed and breakfast, are now back in the mainstream — and they can add charming, cozy, comforting vibes to any space.

Name: Brooke Fitts, with my partner, and my 10-year-old daughter. We also live with our two dogs, Marley and Otis.Location: White Center, Seattle Size: 957 square feetType of Home: Two-bedroom, one-bathroom mid-century house Years lived in: 1 year, owned I found my home on Redfin! I had a great real estate agent, but had a clear idea of what I wanted and didn’t want so kept a roving eye on the market.

This piece was created for Cubby, our weekly newsletter for families at home. Want more? Sign up here for a weekly splash of fun and good ideas for families with kids. My couches are my constant. My pair of Room & Board André sofas have seen me through a new apartment, a new husband, a new job, and a newborn. I bought them long before I thought I would be a father. I lived with IKEA as-is finds and furniture dragged in off the street for my first 10 years in Brooklyn.

This piece was created for Cubby, our weekly newsletter for families at home. Want more? Sign up here for a weekly splash of fun and good ideas for families with kids. Piled among the many challenges of parenthood lie those desperate bedtime blues that leave families exhausted and just a bit defeated. Maybe you know what I’m talking about?

School is almost out and many families are planning summer plans and potential vacations after a year spent primarily inside. As more and more people try to reclaim a sense of “normalcy” in a post-vaccine world, many parents might be wondering if it’s safe for unvaccinated children to play together, hop on planes, and hug family and friends.

This piece was created for Cubby, our weekly newsletter for families at home. Want more? Sign up here for a weekly splash of fun and good ideas for families with kids. About five years ago, I was interviewing a woman for a magazine story when we veered off-topic to her family’s new-to-them Westfalia. She mentioned how life-changing the shift to the camper van had been.

Is it better to travel during the day (have to entertain kids, stop for bathrooms), or travel during the night so kids sleep? But then at least one parent has some serious adjustment to their sleep once they arrive.CathyDear Cathy,Yes! It’s road trip time finally after over a year of being stuck at home, so thanks for the question. I hope I can be helpful here, but I do want to say that any good answer could be very different for different families.

Hey, Maxwell, I heard that when you were a teacher you kept a box of your students’ artwork for twenty years. Is that true? What happened to it? LukeDear Anon,It is true! Back in January of 2000, I was in my second to last year of teaching elementary school. As my class and I crossed the millennium mark and all the fears of Y2K subsided, I had the idea of asking my class to write down where they would be in 20 years, 2020, when I would call them up to come back to school for a reunion.

My daughter wants to make over her room. She wants to hang wallpaper. Should I do it? MeghanDear Meghan,I admire your daughter for her adventurous spirit, and I also understand your hesitancy. Wallpaper can seem like a big commitment and with children changing their minds all the time it doesn’t always make a lot of sense. Here’s what I would say: go for it by transforming ONE wall and don’t do traditional wallpaper!

I am confronting an empty nest and finally have time to go through all those stashes of art. I’m ready to let go, but HOW? A Viking burial pyre of burning art? We seem to have gone through a heavy phase of paint-your-own pottery, with some hideous results … (but as soon as I think of smashing them, it’s like “Ooh! Then we could make a mosaic with the pieces!” and there’s a whole new thing to not be able to throw away).

This piece was created for Cubby, our weekly newsletter for families at home. Want more? Sign up here for a weekly splash of fun and good ideas for families with kids. When you’re in the thick of raising little humans, it can seem somewhat incomprehensible to carve out time for a creative project of your own. Especially if childcare isn’t in the cards at the moment.

This piece was created for Cubby, our weekly newsletter for families at home. Want more? Sign up here for a weekly splash of fun and good ideas for families with kids. Until I was a teenager, I was raised in a multigenerational home, with my parents, brother, and paternal grandparents, and, on occasion, an aunt or uncle or cousin who used our home as a waypoint on their immigration journey.

When my first child was born, my husband’s coworker gave us a wooden step stool as a baby gift. It was a beautiful: solid wood, about 12 inches tall, white with lavender treads and our daughter’s name carved in it in a sweet font. That’s nice, I thought, but why would anyone ever gift an apartment-dweller such a large gift?Well, obviously she was an experienced mom!

It’s difficult to imagine, in advance, the sheer enormousness of actual, physical things that kids come with: the clothes, the shoes, the sports equipment; the books, the games, and the toys. And then there’s the paper. No one prepares you for how long and never-ending the paper trail is. It starts before they’re even born, with doctors’ records, books, and all those special baby shower cards. And the deluge never stops.

Sarah and Tom Godfrey rented their small two-bedroom Victorian terrace house in a village in Nottinghamshire, England, for two years when their landlord decided to sell the house. Sarah was expecting her second child at the time, and although they thought the house was too small for a family of four, the couple knew it had potential. “Having lived in the historical village for two years we knew it was a special place to be,” says Sarah.

This piece was created for Cubby, our weekly newsletter for families at home. Want more? Sign up here for a weekly splash of fun and good ideas for families with kids. I don’t know about you, but I could look at before-and-after photos all day. Show me a messy pantry and then — snap! — perfectly labeled containers of cereal and I’m giddy. That’s pretty much what it’s like in the land of #MomHacks on TikTok.

We’ll be moving soon and I would love any tips on moving with an 18-month-old. Packing, unpacking, cleaning, everything that goes into moving to another state. I’m all ears. 🙂 EmilyDear Emily,At first I was, like, WOW, I’ve got to do some research and ask my other editors to get more info before answering your question.

This piece was created for Cubby, our weekly newsletter for families at home. Want more? Sign up here for a weekly splash of fun and good ideas for families with kids. This winter, when my 6-year-old’s plastic tiara broke into pieces before her virtual ballet recital, she asked if I would put out a call for a replacement to our local Buy Nothing group.

Every parent knows that cleaning up toys is a struggle, but the right organizing system can help make it easier.Leanna Laming, the author of the blog Life by Leanna and a mom of three, acknowledges that her family’s toy closet (above) was better looking than many, but it wasn’t working for her family. Leanne realized there was room for improvement. In particular, while toy types were arranged by bin, those bins were completely opaque and didn’t have labels.

This piece was created for Cubby, our weekly newsletter for families at home. Want more? Sign up here for a weekly splash of fun and good ideas for families with kids. As a mom with a whole closet dedicated to fabric, paper, and 14 hot glue guns, few things bring me more joy than watching my boys harnessing their own creative genius. I beam whenever they excitedly hand me their newest “masterpiece.

This piece was created for Cubby, our weekly newsletter for families at home. Want more? Sign up here for a weekly splash of fun and good ideas for families with kids. When the world shut down last year, parents and kids were faced with all kinds of challenges, and everyone learned (very quickly) that the idyllic place to work, study, and Zoom goes beyond buying the perfect desk. Some families are still fine tuning their spaces to this day.

I like to get ready before my son wakes up in the morning, but lately, he’s been waking up when I start walking around in the morning! He’s got a sound machine in his room but the floor does creak in the hallway. Any ideas on getting a creaky floor to stop creaking? Or helping a kid sleep past 5:30 like he used to? EmilyDear Emily,Thanks so much for this question, because: a.) a quiet morning with children still asleep is one of the most precious things in life and b.

Name: Jean Ross, husband, Craig, two boys, Bowie and Rhys, and a Frenchie, Hawkins (aka Toots)Location: Cobourg, OntarioType of home: Coach houseSize: 3,000 square feetYears lived in: 1 month, ownedTell us a little (or a lot) about your home and the people who live there: We just moved to a small town in Southern Ontario from Toronto a month ago! We had been looking for houses outside the city for years and couldn’t find the right one. We wanted something different and unique.

This piece was created for Cubby, our weekly newsletter for families at home. Want more? Sign up here for a weekly splash of fun and good ideas for families with kids. Spring was heralded by the first few 60-degree days in a row and we were ready. For many, the new season began with the refrain, “Mom, can we open the bubbles and sidewalk chalk, pleaseeee?” For my part, I knew spring had finally arrived when I saw the new Target collection.

Name: Vanessa Béland, husband Félix & baby daughterLocation: Saint-Hubert, QuébecSize: 1100 square feet + basementYears lived in: 4 yearsVanessa and Félix have been cultivating their first home together over the past four years. Taking the renovation process room by room, they have transformed the space into a warm — and very pink! — home that reflects their bright and fun-loving personalities.

Cleaning isn’t typically thought of as “fun” or “interesting” (or if it is, I applaud you). While the chore itself can be boring, there are plenty of clever, fun, and just plain weird cleaning tools out there that can jazz things up. We’re talking about products that are for those small annoying tasks that aren’t completely terrible, but could be made better — you just don’t think about them as much.

This piece was created for Cubby, our weekly newsletter for families at home. Want more? Sign up here for a weekly splash of fun and good ideas for families with kids. Our family is obsessed with thanking one another. We exchange gratitude for the practical acts (picking up the groceries; sharing the last slice of pizza; tidying up the toys) as well as the big moments (for being brave at school; for forgiving me when I snapped at you).

This piece was created for Cubby, our weekly newsletter for families at home. Want more? Sign up here for a weekly splash of fun and good ideas for families with kids. One night before the pandemic, I picked up my middle-schooler at a friend’s house and saw an amazing sight: the friend’s brother was folding napkins and setting the table.Kids can do things! I thought. It was a moment of revelation.

This piece was created for Cubby, our weekly newsletter for families at home. Want more? Sign up here for a weekly splash of fun and good ideas for families with kids. I believe it is very important to begin this story by stating that while emotionally difficult, being able to isolate safely from one’s family is an enormous privilege. I am exiting my third extensive quarantine from my children and husband following medical procedures that put me at risk of exposure.

Name: Hannah Broadway and Felix HayesLocation: Eastville, BristolSize: 1600-ish square feetYears Lived In: Owned for 10 years (ish)“We are lucky that we share a similar aesthetic. I guess having been together for over 20 years can do that,” says illustrator and designer Hannah Broadway. She and her actor husband Felix live in this colorful home in Bristol with their daughter Ursula and cats Ron and Kitsune.

Name: Melanie and David Raver, three young girls ages 10, 6, and 5. And one furry black German Shepherd! Location: We live everywhere! Size: 200 square feetType of Home: 1973 Airstream ArgosyYears lived in: 3.5 months, ownedCurrently traveling from the California coast to the East Coast, Melanie and David and their three daughters have been a lot of places in their 200-square-foot 1973 Airstream Argosy. Exclaims Melanie, “We are having a BLAST making each new place we stop at our home!

I don’t really have a question. Just curious, what are you reading lately ? 🙂MyselfOkay, this week I didn’t get a question in my email. So I’ve been wracking my head what to write about — (send me a hard question!) — when I began to think about two books I’ve just finished and how they deeply resonated with me as a parent. They also made me think back to what it was like to be a child of ten with my own parents.

This piece was created for Cubby, our weekly newsletter for families at home. Want more? Sign up here for a weekly splash of fun and good ideas for families with kids. One of the most utterly soul-sucking requirements of being a parent for me is having to repeat myself over and over and over again.

What’s a work space without proper lighting? While you may have your desk tricked out with a sleek modern lamp, it’s worth considering the light your kids are working with, too, when it comes to their crafts and homework. Lighting can make a huge difference — not just with visibility — but in setting the proper atmosphere, whether you’d like it to be relaxing or studious.

Jawaria Ansari has lived in this 675-square-foot Pittsburgh apartment for 18 years—a long time for any renter, but even more impressive when you consider how she’s been able to adapt the small space as her life has evolved. “I had just graduated from university, and moved from Florida to Pittsburgh for my post graduate studies.

Shortly after shelter-in-place began last year, so did the wild pandemic shopping. (Remember that phase?) Everything from used bicycles and basketball hoops were swooped up from second-hand neighborhood sites and new recreational equipment was back ordered for weeks and months. Meanwhile, people were adopting cats and dogs in record numbers. A video went viral of shelter volunteers in Florida celebrating the first time they’d adopted out every single pet.

“There are seven days in a week, and someday isn’t one of them” once read the letter board hanging in the kitchen of “Someday” the bus, which is home to Jennifer Bateman, her wife, Kaitlin Porter, and their two kids, Canyon (age 14) and Oakland (age 4).After downsizing from a 4,000-square-foot home, they now share a 170-square-foot school bus conversion (or “skoolie”).

When considering a rug for a kids’ room, style should not have to take second place to durability. Thankfully, many modern furniture stores carry lines of rugs and floor coverings that look great in a child’s room and are built to last.

Name: Elizabeth Rees, co-founder of Chasing Paper, husband Brian Leadley, Uma (19-month-old daughter), Marlow (5-month-old daughter), and Lucy (15-year-old Goldendoodle)Location: Walker’s Point — Milwaukee, Wisconsin Size: 1900 square feetType of home: House Years lived in: 3 years, owned Elizabeth Rees is the co-founder of Chasing Paper, a popular removable (and traditional) wallpaper you should absolutely know about if you rent and love pattern (or own and love pattern!).

When doing laundry, it’s all but guaranteed that at least one sock is going to go missing. You probably know the feeling of getting to the end of a folding session and finding a lone sock (if not more) without its partner, even though you’re certain you put complete pairs into the washing machine. You might even have a collection of singular socks drifting aimlessly at the bottom of a drawer somewhere, waiting for their other halves to return from the dryer in the great beyond.

If you’ve ever read The Five Love Languages book (or taken the ubiquitous online quizzes to suss out which love language is yours), you may recall that they are: words of affirmation, quality time, acts of service, physical touch, and receiving gifts. But I’d wager that there’s also a secret sixth love language: Home decor choices.

Lockdown has struck us again and my kid is back Zoomschooling all day long. His room is like a troll’s den and his energy is super low. How can I help him? NancyDear Nancy,I feel very lucky that my daughter’s school has so far—knock on wood—kept them in the classroom since September. Last spring, when she was home full-time, she turned into a slouch-monster and never left the old lounge chair with her ready Hydro Flask all day.

Before I actually had kids, I envisioned their toy collection to be quaint and timeless—mostly wooden, and definitely not derived from the Nickelodeon franchise. But here we are, with an entire stable of miniature Paw Patrol stuffed animals.My boys aren’t the type of kids who drag a stuffed animal with them everywhere, but I frequently find myself turning my house upside down to find these Paw Patrol pups, who are often the main characters in their imaginary games.

During this pandemic we’ve caved in more than usual to letting our kids watch movies, and I would love them to be really good for them. Any guidance? MollyDear Molly,As a teacher of young children I saw firsthand the effects of too much screen-time on young brains, but I also believe in doing what I can as a parent to educate and turn a potential problem into an opportunity.

Most of the time my house is, shall we say, messier than one would strictly like. With a five-year-old and a three-year-old, c’est la vie. But up until recently there was one room that stood out as weirdly miserable: my family bathroom. This bathroom was the victim of a bad, sad patch job before we bought our home eight years ago. It has drippy plumbing (I have a spot on the living room ceiling to prove this), awkward corners, and a curious lack of storage.

I’ve got two daughters, one in first grade and the other in third, and they are prolific artists. It’s all over the kitchen walls and filling up corners of every room. I love it all, don’t want to throw anything away but I don’t know how to keep up with it all. What should I keep? What’s the best place to store it all? NadiaDear Nadia,I have very firm opinions on this and kids’ clutter in general, which is far less special than their original art. Here we go.

Kristin Pardy knows a thing or two about squeezing a large family into a small space. She shares her 800-square-foot home with her husband Preston (a resource enforcement officer for their provincial government), 13-year-old son Coby, 7-year-old daughter Isla, and 3-month-old son Jack. The family also includes three huskies, Bear, Blue, and Beau. Kristin, along with being an emergency medical responder for a local ambulance company, is also a blogger and YouTuber.

You know how in that post-holiday, pre-New Year’s limbo zone your house becomes kind of a mess because everyone is home, all day long, for days? It’s been like that around our house for two and a half months and it’s probably similar in yours. With school, pre-school, and every single out-of-the-house activity on hold, each and every mess made by my curious and vivacious kids and always-home husband happens right under the roof of our perpetually full house.

Tyler Moore blogs under the name “Tidy Dad,” and tidy is just what you have to be when you’re sharing a small NYC third floor walk-up, railroad-style rental apartment with a family. In Tyler’s case that’s wife Emily, 5-year-old Mabel, 3-year-old Matilda, and 7-month-old Margaret, and they’ve had to do some adjusting to their home’s layout a few times in the seven years they’ve been renting.

My current life does not cater to my natural HSP (Highly Sensitive Person) tendencies. I’m a mother of five, three of whom are active little boys, and our house is … boisterous. (Of course, I wouldn’t have it any other way.) I’m learning to listen to the sound of sibling scuffles and middle children clamoring to be heard, and doors slamming as kids go outside to rollerblade and then back inside for an urgently needed snack as the soundtrack of the “good old days.

Big Mountain Skier-turned-startup founder Kina Pickett shares a 200-square-foot 1971 Airstream International with his wife Nellie, their 6-year-old son Ashur, 4-year-old daughter Story, and their dog Scout. This family of four (plus dog!) purchased an Airstream just before the pandemic broke in February, and have been traveling, remote working, and homeschooling since.

I turned 30 a couple of years ago and, despite being solidly married with two children, I suddenly felt this need to adult harder than ever. Things were pretty chaotic (see: two kids) and I was grasping desperately for small things I could tweak to streamline, or simplify — whatever I could do to help me gain more control over the day-to-day. I did not read Marie Kondo and thank my old prom dress before donating it. I didn’t start intensive Sunday meal prepping.

I have a number of colleagues at work who are all having babies in the next few months and taking leave. I’d really like to send them off with a present and want it to be something long lasting and memorable. Help!LauraDear Laura, Coming off the holidays, I’m primed with gift advice and I really like this question, particularly because we’re talking about NEW parents.

As my son gets older I’d like to give him a birthday present that’s also a keepsake and marks this special time that’s moving so fast. Any good ideas? YasminDear Yasmin,I remember when my daughter was smaller, I’d bump into other dads and they’d all say the same thing, “They grow up so quick, don’t they? I just don’t know where the time has gone.

Hi there, Cubby friends! We started Cubby on the spur of the moment this fall (although the idea has been in our heads for a long time). We felt cooped up with our families, but we had a hunch that, while this year has mostly been a flaming dumpster fire of things we hope never happen again in our lifetimes, we might be left with a teeny-weeny bit of nostalgia for all this extra time with our cubs.