Author: Christy Baker

GROWING ROOM
How to be the cool uncle
Challenge: Prepping an adults-only space for young visitors

Mark Farmwald’s loft apartment acts as his bachelor pad, commercial photography and film studio, gallery of sorts, and office. Lighting equipment, rolls of paper and glossy prints populate the vast 1,400-square-foot space. The décor incorporates quintessential modern design (marble-top Saarinen tulip table) with contrasting industrial finishes (exposed brick and duct work, sleek granite countertops). So when Mark’s teenage niece and nephew (16 and 15 respectively) come for a visit from Raleigh, he makes some kid-friendly accommodations.

Firstly, there’s Pre-Emptive Damage Control for his expensive photographic equipment: “I have cases for all of my gear,” he said. “It all breaks down and goes away.”

Next, the Teen-Approved Entertainment: “Because I have so much open space and all of this wood floor,” he said. “I thought it would be really cool to get a little race-track with remote control cars. You could go through the kitchen, through the dining room, a little detour into the bathroom, come back out into the sitting area, out into this main area—it’s about 600 to 650 square feet.” With a mischievous Tom-Hanks-in-Big smile, he continued, “They could do jumps off of the stairs —all kinds of stuff.”

“[One] thing that I think is really important is the sound system,” he emphasized. “It’s not that expensive but it’s loud. I installed this [Bose 321] system to be there for them.”

Madeline and Morgan can hook up their iPods, crank up the satellite radio, stream Pandora or even play records.

Conspicuously absent, however, are video games. “I have no video game system—that’s very conscious,” Farmwald explained. “Because when I have [my niece and nephew] here, I don’t want them playing video games. Even if we’re watching a movie it’s something that everyone can enjoy, more than two people. We play board games.”

Which leads to, A Place to Hang Out: “This carpet was so important because I have wood floors and I thought, oh the wood floors are so beautiful, but the kids don’t want to sit on the wood floor and play games. So, I got this 17×14 remnant and had the edge stitched. It’s not wall-to-wall carpet, you can still see the wood floor, but this is where we get on the floor and you know, play with the dog.”

When asked what advice he would give to folks who are having kid visitors for the holidays, Farmwald said, “I think that having something that’s entertaining is good, like a stash of movies. Having a dog helps. From a safety standpoint, I’m not a clutter person, there’s just not a lot of stuff lying around, so there’s not going to be a lot of temptations. Those are the two things: Get rid of clutter and have entertainment.”

Oh, and you might want to warn the neighbors—unless, like Cool Uncle Mark, you don’t have any. “I have a parking garage across the street and I have a caterer below that only works about once a week, at the most, and the space upstairs is empty. So crank up the sound system and let the kids scream.”—Christy Baker

MINI STORAGE
Soundly
Long gone are the days of CD binders and racks. You probably have all of your music organized on an iPod or some such digital device. So, storage isn’t an issue. But what’s a Cool Uncle to do when looking for an epic sound system that won’t take over the living room or break the bank? Try one of the Bose Acoustimass systems from Crutchfield ($399- 999). These diminutive speakers pack an aural punch.—C.B.

Stacey Smith with Maia, age 7 and Hall, age 4. Photo by John Robinson.

Upside of a downsize

Challenge: Moving to a smaller home and embracing the change

The sad state of our economy has forced many to downsize, adjust and rethink how they live. Stacey Smith of Charlottesville recently made the tough decision to take a job with a local nonprofit, Shelter for Help in Emergency. Leaving a more lucrative place of employ has forced Smith to relocate from her Ridge Crest townhouse to a smaller rental in Belmont. Her two children, Maia (7) and Hall (4), are adjusting to life sharing a room and a big back yard. By thoughtfully preparing for the change of location, Smith has smoothed the transition for all involved.

When asked what she liked about her new room, Maia answered, “Well, there’s one thing I don’t like about it, which is really annoying: Hall.” 

“Previously, Maia had all of her toys in her room and Hall had all of his toys in his room,” Smith explained. “There was an area with shared toys but for the most part, they were completely separate, and now they’re kind of intermingled, so there’s a lot of fighting over, ‘That’s my toy. No, that’s my toy’.” 

Ever the peace-keeper, Smith has purchased color-coded bins to delineate whose toys belong to who. (“I hate this, but I got pink for Maia and blue for Hall.”) 

Toy wars aside (and honestly, what siblings don’t have conflict over toys, move or no move?), there are some great attributes to the new digs. For one, the rent is affordable. “The mortgage at the old house was just too high,” says Smith. “I work for a non-profit; there’s no money in that, but it’s more rewarding.” 

Their Belmont home is also closer to the kids’ schools, the shelter and Downtown. And the best part, everyone agrees, is the big back yard. “[The townhouse], where we were before, there was a shared yard but it wasn’t like they could go outside and play,” explained Smith. Now, there is a large expanse of lush grass stretching from the back of the house to a thick edge of trees that creates a natural buffer from the sounds of traffic on busy Avon Street. “There’s one [new] rule,” said Maia, matter-of-factly. “You can’t go across our clothesline.”

Mom clarified, “Yes, they can’t go past our clothesline because that embankment [behind it] leads right to Avon. So, if they were to fall down it that would be super dangerous.”

“One thing I did, so as to lessen the change,” she explained, “was to get rid of things while they weren’t there. That made it easier because, I mean, they’re moving and [experiencing a lot of change] anyway, and it would have been really hard to [say], ‘Yeah, we’re moving all of your things and now we’re also going to get rid of a lot of your stuff, too.’”By thinking through the details and preparing for this big shift in lifestyle and location, Smith encouraged a very positive and easy transition for her kids. 

On moving day, the first thing she did was to set up Maia and Hall’s room. “Which is important,” she emphasized, “because no matter what the rest of the house looks like at least they have a place [of their own].”

Despite the massive construction site not 50 yards from their Fry’s Spring front porch, Rob and Adrienne Dent maintain a joyfully serene home. Just inside the front door, the family’s shoes are neatly tucked into old wooden post office mailboxes. Their children, Laurel (7) and Alden (6), drag out a painted vintage suitcase and happily select dress-up clothes, ready to perform. Like the ad hoc assortment of fabulous thrift store costumes, the whole home is decorated with vintage and antique treasures.

The décor is at once effortlessly unique and yet comfortably familiar—an aesthetic that Adrienne Dent, a busy CASA volunteer and substitute teacher, achieves through her love of shopping secondhand. “I grew up internalizing the thrill of finding a good deal from my mom,” she says, smiling. 

Deal-hunting can be habit forming and, as she explains, it is important to show some restraint. “Our society is so commercially driven [and] I’ve bought into it so much that I get the desire to go out and buy things,” says Dent. “But, [I go] to the Salvation Army and I often return with nothing.”

Self-discipline helps to explain why the Dent home is tidy, organized, and free from clutter. One of the many benefits of thrift-store finds is the psychological freedom to cycle things through: Many of the Dent family trips to the Salvation Army are to drop off donations.

“At Christmastime, before we unload after coming back from the relatives, we [tell the kids], ‘O.K., let’s go through and make room for your things.’ They are stewards of their own space and their own things, so they decide what they’re ready to get rid of. And then to see that back at the Salvation Army again, it makes you feel so good!”

She laughs and continues, “Yay! I have had no footprint and yet I’ve nourished my kids and my family and myself!”

The kids’ rooms reflect personal, developing tastes in conjunction with secondhand finds. “It is always evolving,” says Dent. “Their needs and the way they interact with their environment changes so dramatically compared to ours.” The décor is comprised of piecing together what she finds while acknowledging her son and daughter’s current stage of development. 

The light-filled playroom is a good example of a space where changes have been made frequently over the years. To summarize, Dent explains, “More books, more shelves, more bins to throw things in. Less stuff on the floor.” The two shelving units (from London’s Bathecary when it was having a closing sale), the storage bins (Salvation Army and other thrift stores) and even the butcher-block craft island (decades ago from Ikea), all fit together to create an original and unified space.

Being consumers of secondhand goods has allowed the Dents a certain freedom to not only acquire items inexpensively, but to let go of the stuff in their life a little more readily, contributing to a more healthful cycle of consumption. 

As Rob Dent, a gifted resource teacher at a local middle school, points out, “To me there is so much stuff out there that I’d rather buy something that’s already there than have a new one made. That’s what it comes down to for me."

 The Gallaghers’ in-ground backyard pool shimmers in the summer afternoon light, offering a welcome respite from Charlottesville’s August heat. A child-proof, gated safety fence keeps Caitlin and Sean’s two young children, Amelia (4) and Brendan (2) from venturing into the water alone. Managing a safe environment in and around the family pool has been an ongoing activity for the Gallaghers.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, drowning is the number two cause of accidental death in children ages 1 to 14. The Gallaghers mitigate the safety risks through various measures. There is the aforementioned, automatically latching gate, for one. Also, constant vigilant adult supervision is essential: one child per adult.

Perhaps the most important part of the family’s safety regimen is teaching water safety to their children. “Both kids have gone to these lessons through Morgan Swim School,” explains Caitlin. “Their focus [at the school] is to teach kids how to save themselves if they’ve fallen in the water. The test at the end of [the program] is they have your child jump into the water fully clothed with their shoes on and everything, and come up and float on their back.” Amelia and Brendan also take swim lessons year round through ACAC, and a private instructor comes to their home once a week during the summer.

One recommendation made by safety experts that the Gallaghers do not employ is an in-water alarm system to detect when there is a disturbance, such as a child falling in. “We have frogs that go into our pool all of the time,” Caitlin says, laughing. “So, [an in-water alarm] would be going off constantly! [We have] a special cover for the filters that has a little ramp that [the frogs] can use to climb out.”

Besides the frog ramps, another feature of the Gallaghers’ pool is that the water is treated with saline, which softens the water and is much gentler on sensitive skin than chlorine. Caitlin, the owner of Snip-Its, a children’s salon in the Hollymead Town Center, points out another benefit of the salt-water solution: It doesn’t bleach (or tint) hair!

The Gallaghers’ pool gets used every day, sometimes several times a day. And because it is so accessible to their home, the enjoyment of the water can be spontaneous.

“All of my friends say, ‘Oh, we went to the pool today.’ And they’re packing their snacks, and their drink cups, and their towels, and their change of clothes, and their diapers, and their wipes—you know, like, everything and the kitchen sink!” says Caitlin. “And you feel like since you’ve done all this you have to stay for at least four hours or something crazy like that. It’s just nice that we can jump out in the pool for 14 minutes, or if it’s late after dinner and the kids still want to go for a quick swim, O.K., we can still do it because it takes five minutes to put on suits and go out there.”

How refreshing!—Christy Baker

One-liner

A retractable clothesline from Meadowbrook Hardware ($21.39) helps keep damp towels and swimsuits from piling up. Use it indoors or out, through the summer and beyond! For a sweet and practical touch, clip on these colorful sparrow-shaped clothespins, available through amazon.com ($13.99- $21 for 16 clips).—C.B.

Problem: Deciding what stays and what goes
Erin and Mike Garcia have lived, with their two children—Elias (4) and Charis (2)—in their 1950s Fry’s Spring home for a little over a year. Their relocation from Crozet was prompted by the desire to be closer to town and their offices (Erin is a local Realtor and Mike is a psychologist). Surprisingly, the size of their new Charlottesville house (1,800 square feet) is slightly smaller than their previous townhome. Despite the expanding needs of a young family of four, the Garcias are able to make the most of their space by, as Erin puts it, “down-sizing our mentality.” 

“The idea is that we’re keeping things we actually use, and things that we really like,” she explains. “Not that we’ve arrived at this goal; [it’s] a work in progress.”

It appears that they are well on their way to meeting their objective. The children’s rooms blend seamlessly with the aesthetic of the rest of the home (no glaring colors or piles of toys here). Their son’s bedroom, for example, contains simply a classic antique four-poster bed and dresser. The color scheme is made of chocolate browns and creams. An artistic black and white photographic portrait of Elias as a newborn is neatly framed on the wall. The room is timeless, honest and quite cozy. Absent are stray Hotwheels and dirty shirts: the typical detritus of most 4-year-old boys.

The family den is where all of those missing toy cars, books and blocks can be found. Tucked away in a large closet are several clear plastic bins that house the children’s playthings. A corner bookshelf has grown-up reading material on the higher shelves and the lower ones are full of well-loved picture books, easily accessible for smaller readers.

Parents and children alike have agreed to dedicate this room to play and messier family time. As a result, the rest of the house remains calm and open for more focused activities, such as enjoying a fire in the living room fireplace or having unexpected guests drop in for a glass of Chicha Morado (Mike’s family is from Peru and this sweet purple corn drink is a family favorite).

When I visit, Charis is busy opening and closing the sliding screen door, happily coming in and out. Elias and his papi are working in the garden, digging and raking. There is an ease of pace, a sense that the activity going on is about living, not a frantic race to stay ahead of the mess and the stuff.

It’s not all carefree. Keeping a handle on the clutter does take some vigilance, as Erin explains. “We’re in a constant state of assessing what we need,” she says—“versus things we’re holding onto because we spent money on it, might need it again, or because someone gave it to us.”

Just like parenting, “It’s an ongoing exercise of discipline.”

Mini storage

Off the hook
Small drawstring fabric bags make tidying up a cinch! Perfect for small toys, these eco-friendly batik Wrap Sacks come in various colors and sizes at Integral Yoga ($4.99-6.99). Hang them from a row of funky or sophisticated wall hooks (Anthropologie carries a diverse assortment, $8-48) and de-clutter with style.
 

Problem: Making room for play, no matter what the weather
Becky Scott and Andy Orban’s backyard stretches past several stately oak trees and down to a creek nearly a hundred yards behind their North Downtown home. Their children, Nathaniel and Carrie (3-and-a-half years and 22 months, respectively), are outside nearly every day, now that spring has sprung. With plenty of room to run and dig and explore outside, it could be a challenge when the weather is uncooperative and the siblings are stuck indoors. However, one of the many charms of this 1955 home, besides the big backyard, is a unique arrangement of space on the top floor.

The upper rooms are a straight shot from the side door, easing the transition from outside to in. Upstairs, the sun sparkles through a prism hanging from the frame of a skylight, casting rainbows of light on a crate of blocks, Nathaniel’s big-boy bed and a few of the seven doors that dot the surrounding walls. One door leads to a newly refurbished bathroom, a few lead to storage spaces (closets and crawl spaces) and two more open to reveal a cozy U-shaped playroom that wraps around the top of the stairwell.

When open, the two doors create a loop through the little room, allowing for an indoor track of sorts (on rainy days, the kids will, in fact, run in circles!). The shape and scale of the room, with its low ceiling and narrow walls, is ready-made for a playhouse, fort or perhaps the bow of a ship. So, even when the weather is fine, this hide-away room functions as a place for quiet play and imagination.

A formative part of Becky Scott’s own upbringing was the local preschool that her parents ran until her father retired. Speaking of magic in the attic, she says, “I often go [to my parents’ house] and just raid the attic because they still have a bunch of stuff up there!”

On a recent treasure hunt she came across a collection of vintage toy road signs that now decorate one of the shelves in Nathaniel’s room, adding to the ’50s nostalgia of the house as well as fueling imaginative play.

Much to Nathaniel’s delight when I visit, it is a glorious spring day and he and his dad are digging in the yard. Nathaniel gives me a tour of the garden. “We kind of sowed seeds in there,” he tells me, pointing. “We planted peas!” After taking a ride on the slide we meander back to the house, where Nathaniel excitedly climbs the stairs, ready to play.

A long line of toy cars lines the edge of a low wooden desk in the playroom. Bathed in the light from another sunny window, it’s easy to understand why, rain or shine, this little room has a draw all its own.

“For me, a big part of having the kids entertained and playing is outside,” Scott explains. “And, really, that’s the reason we bought this house: because of the back yard.” Smiling, she says, “It’s nice to have a good space inside, too.”

Store anywhere

Use this wire basket ($45, The Artful Lodger), indoors or out, for simple and durable storage. Fill it with stuffed animals (like these from O’Suzannah), inside, or stray sandbox toys, outside. Line the interior with a cloth bag and you have a classy laundry hamper.

 “We’re in a tower right now,” explains Sam Gorman, 15. Sam and his brother Max, 13, are showing me around what their mom, Susan, refers to as their “man cave.” High up in their Nelson County home, the room consists of video game paraphernalia, TV, computer and a funky green velvet couch propped up on stacks of books. 

A row of vintage vinyl decorates the walls (Sam skimmed from dad Tim’s collection). Someone’s drawn on the wall behind the Mac (“Nostradamus” says the speech bubble above one of the creatures’ heads) and a painting of Sam’s is propped in a window. The painting not only adds to the decor, it also serves to block light. As Max explains, he’s had to rig up a pile of stuff to block the glare produced from the tower’s windows. It disrupts the video game action. 

The cool thing about this setup is that by having a designated place for all of the media-related activities the boys can more consciously decide what to do with their time. Of course, as they both admit, they do spend a lot of time up here in the cave.

Downstairs, Sam shows me his bedroom. Two longboard skate decks are hung like paintings on the green walls. In the opposite corner, three skateboards have been converted into shelves displaying Sam’s collection of Kid Robot figures. A closet affords storage for clothes and board games, a tall shelf houses books and miscellany. Scattered here and there is the requisite pile of (clean? dirty?) clothes and general teenage detritus. 

“I think I’ve got pretty good storage,” says Sam. “I mean, I’ve got too much stuff, is the problem.” 

Still, the bedroom lacks television, computer or stereo. It’s very much unplugged.

Down the hall in Max’s room, I find it difficult to navigate: stuff is everywhere. A space-themed mural, painted by his dad, decorates one of the blue walls and a re-painted Ikea dresser sits partially buried along another. A veritable arsenal of Nerf guns and other weaponry cover his bed. His method of cleaning his room, should he actually do it, is simple. “I normally just [group] stuff and find a bucket to put it in,” he explains. “I cleaned my room a while ago and then it just got out of hand.”

Despite the explosion of Star Wars figures, clothes and who-knows-what, again, electronic media are conspicuously absent.

In an age when keyboards have begun to replace paper and pens, when television shows act as bedtime stories, these teens are afforded the opportunity to retreat from the constant hum and buzz of electronics. With the help of a separate media space, plus two engaged and resourceful parents, these brothers get their screen time, but still have room to explore, play, and just be.

 Problem: Welcoming a baby into a small apartment

From the northeastern window of the Sparling family’s fifth-floor Charlottesville apartment in the 90-year-old Altamont Circle building, you can see rooftops, steeples and the gray-blue edge of the mountains. The approximately 750-square-foot space is home to 7-month-old Arlie Pearl, her parents and two medium-sized dogs. What this cozy and stylish residence doesn’t contain are all of the baby accoutrements that have become de rigueur in the homes of many new parents.

“A big thing for us is that we don’t have a lot of space, so a lot of toys are not in our future for her,” Anna, Arlie’s mother, points out. “She’s going to need more stuff (as she grows) but right now I don’t think she’s under-toyed.” (Anna laughs and her daughter follows suit.)