Modern Furniture

The old-fashioned nursery had the right basic ideas. It was essentially a room given over to children for which most parents were content to provide, if they could, a well-ventilated space with somewhere to sleep, plenty of floor/play space, somewhere to sit, some sort of games, drawing, work surface and reasonable storage.

In a sense this sort of framework is still in force today - but with some big differences. First, many of the clever and colorful ideas produced for nursery and primary schools to provide in­tellectual stimulus for their pupils have begun to trickle back into the home in the form of educational play­things, body-building structures and early learn­ing apparatus. And second, children today belong to a tech­nologically sophisticated genera­tion where the computer is becom­ing as commonplace as the tele­vision, and where audio-visual equipment replaces building bricks and snakes and ladders almost as a matter of course.

This means that any forward planning at the infant stage should involve thinking at least about the probability of having to make room for such things. While it is impos­sible to project several years ahead and visualize exactly what amazing new inventions are going to invade our lives, let alone what size and shape they are going to be or how many extra electric points and out­lets they’ll need, what you can do is think in terms of flexible arrange­ments in the home.

Parents of young infants will find it difficult to imagine anything at all beyond the immediate world of nappies and feeds, cots and baths but it doesn’t last forever and if that’s all they’ve planned for, they’ll find the room soon out­grown and unsuit­able for the next stage in their children’s lives. The time, money and effort spent on creating a room the chil­dren don’t want to use will be wasted.

So, when you are faced with this empty room that you want to take care of your children’s needs for the next eighteen years, remem­ber, as you make your plans, that ad­aptability is the name of the game.