Well, sometimes they do as it’s the only space left! (spot the wee face!)
With the arrival of Twinkle’s new walking frame, I decided I needed to rearrange things in the house in an attempt to get some floor area for her to practice walking in!
At the moment we have a step up into our living room and into our kitchen/dining room from the hall, so Twinkle wouldn’t easily be able to get from one to the other in her walker (we are optimistic that this will become a problem when she gets the hang of walking in it!).
Our living room is a little small and generally the floor is strewn with toys that little bro likes to distribute evenly around, so we’re going to stick to walking practice in the kitchen/dining room to start with.
It’s an open plan room with a breakfast bar separating the dining table from the kitchen, but with quite a big gap at the end of the breakfast bar, so there’s a nice wide strip of floor from the kitchen past the end of the breakfast bar and dining table, and also between the dining table and the breakfast bar ….. well ….. that would be the case if we didn’t also have to accommodate:
- the walking frame itself (it’s not small!)
- Twinkle’s high chair (a postural support chair with a big tray)
- Wee Bro’s high chair
- Twinkle’s standing frame with table (which to be honest she has really outgrown in size and development so I’m hoping the physio will agree and it can soon move on to a new home and help another little person…..and give us a little extra walking space!!!)
- a travel cot which doubles as a playpen/safe space for either child when I’m cooking/washing up or dealing with the dogs and/or the other child
- Plus, the dogs beds, which have been slotted under the end of the dining table (– which actually they quite like as it’s like a little den for them).
(this list doesn’t include puschairs – we have a special needs buggy, a double buggy & a mainstream single buggy – which live in the car most of the time as we struggle for space indoors)
So, the result is a game of 3D tetris each time we want to use a piece of equipment!
Storage for this additional equipment would be so useful for us, but aside from the clutter factor, the lack of floor space makes it a bit of a mission for us to actually use the walking frame properly. I know the same issue affects so many other families, whether a walking frame, a wheelchair or hoist (or a combination of all three!) – space and planning is key!