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As busy as they are, kitchens are just about the germiest places in our homes—especially all those handles. You touch food, you open the oven. Your kids come in after touching who-knows-what and head straight to the fridge (or maybe it’s just mine?). With all that touching comes the risk of cross-contamination of foodborne illnesses and the spread of germs (in addition to all our fears about coronavirus, flu season is coming!).

Name: Amber and Chris Earl, owners of EARL (@earl_home); their daughters, Giavanni, 4, and Copen, 3; and son, Guy, 1Location: North Hollywood, CaliforniaObserving a house evolve over time is a specific kind of pleasure: It’s like watching a young person grow up. You can see how a home stretches, adapts, and evolves to the lives that are being lived within. A visit to Amber and Chris Earl’s two-bedroom home in North Hollywood shows a house that has found its stride.

Last spring as the world shut down, I snapped up masks, Purell, and something expensive and seemingly frivolous: an outdoor sectional. I’m not kidding when I say that impulse purchase saved us. It got me through the long, lonely first months of quarantine, the worry about my kids’ emotional health, and the heartbreak when I suddenly lost my dad in early summer. It’s like we magically got a bonus room in our cramped house.

I have two children: a six-year old boy and a three-year old girl, who eat and play all over the house. They are wearing things out fast. What kind of sofa is most likely to survive them?MelissaDear Melissa, I’ve got three directions you can go.

Names: Bridget, Bill, and Mabel Watson Payne Location: Nob Hill/Tenderloin — San Francisco, California Size: 650 square feetHow do you fit more books into an apartment with 20 bookshelves is not a question most families find themselves asking, but it’s constantly on the minds of Bridget and Bill Watson Payne, who are parents to one daughter, Mabel. “One look around will tell you that we love books, color, and art,” Bridget says.

Since IKEA introduced the DUKTIG play kitchen, customers have brainstormed ways to hack and customize this plain Jane item into something with more personality and charm—like, you know, a full-sized kitchen might have. The tweaks these parents have made are doable for even DIY beginners and, I think you’ll agree, make these little plays kitchens even more special for their kids.

Here at the Cubby, it’s no secret that we love IKEA. We love IKEA’s famously low prices and Scandinavian style. But we also love the company’s commitment to sustainability. We polled our team and fellow parents to come up with a list of the best products for families from IKEA. These are the products that we know work well and don’t fall apart.

With all our meals happening at home, what can we do to make our dining space more inviting? We recently converted a small bedroom to our dining room, we eat all our meals there, with our 10-year-old and 7-year-old, and the space is so drab. With cold weather approaching here in Maine, we’d love for our dining room to feel like more of a destination in our house and not just a pass-through space.

“I love the way I’ve set up the house! I love our living room so much. That’s where we spend most of our time together: It feels super cozy.” Name: Caroline and Jason Rodrigues, owners of @shopmercimilo; their daughter, Milo, 5; and Caroline’s children, Cailin, 14, and Darren, 16, who live there part of the timeLocation: Glendale, CaliforinaImagine if your child had a never-ending stream of toys showing up in your home.

A child’s relationship to books is one of the biggest predictors of their success down the road, and exposure to all types of print has a lot to do with early reading ability. So hang on to your well-worn “Calvin & Hobbes” treasuries, go ahead and subscribe to Highlights, and definitely send a book-loving message by keeping a fairly robust library, if that’s your thing.

Halloween is Apartment Therapy Tour Editor Adrienne Breaux’s favorite holiday. Our New Orleans-based editor jokes that it’s practically mandatory to decorate for the holiday. In fact, Adrienne put her Halloween decorations up before Labor Day this year (and made a convincing case for why you should put yours up early too). While we missed the boat for the early-bird decor, there are a ton of ideas to steal from Adrienne’s stylish, colorful, and downright joyful home.

I enjoy simplifying and streamlining wherever I can, especially when it comes to routines and tasks at home. Usually this means downsizing supplies and tools and cutting down on decisions when possible. Simplifying almost always means less.But when it came to solving my laundry problem, it turns out that simplifying means having more of something, specifically more laundry baskets. First some background: We’re a family of seven.

One night while visiting my parents a few years back, my dad hauled an old chair up from the basement for my son. This was a chair I’d sat in for hundreds of family meals as a child; it had then made its way through some younger cousins and gotten a custom paint job along the way. Not a high chair and not a full-sized chair, this was a seat designed specifically for a little kid. My son loved it.

Most parents would balk at the prospect of moving into a former garage with their child, but designer Cherub Stewart of Florida Water Interiors, saw the potential in a lofty converted garage in the Newark, New Jersey area. With her background in interior design, Cherub could look past the concrete interior and parking lot outside to see the space’s good bones.

From simple solutions like a new outdoor umbrella to sky-high additions, like a parkour gym in the garage, ten families share how they have changed and improved their homes to adapt to the weird times we're living in.

Joyce Lee's apartment is filled with stylish, family-friendly ideas, including her secret to a tidy living room.