A Note from YouthfulNest on Designing the Family Room @ SXSW

When Milk Stork reached out to me to partner with them in designing the Milk Stork Family Room @ SXSW, I was thrilled!

The Milk Stork brand is providing a much-needed service that supports motherhood in a way that could only have been realized by a woman whose own personal experience in trying to make it all work — breastfeed and travel for business — resulted in the creation of something innovative and revolutionary. This is something that I can understand and relate to, as my own company, YouthfulNest, was born from my overcoming the challenges of planning my baby’s nursery as a first-time mom. Setting up a nursery can be a fun but also overwhelming part of pregnancy, and YouthfulNest is dedicated to relieving some of that stress through expert e-design services.

When visualizing the environment for the SXSW Family Room, my first thoughts centered on how to translate what happens in the privacy of one’s own nursery. What are the needs that we can anticipate a breastfeeding or pumping mother to have? How can we address them while working with a relatively large, shared event space? My first thought was to incorporate the comfort of a glider — the ability to rock and soothe was an important aspect I wanted to integrate into the room’s design. Other comfy touches came to life in the form of chic soft pillows and cozy, oversized throws.

As for functionality, we always make it a rule to incorporate significant storage and/or surface area for everything mom and baby need. For the Milk Stork Family Room, we brought in side and coffee tables to provide ample space for placing nursing supplies and other personal items. These smooth-edge side tables were strategically placed next to every seating area throughout the lounge to make it easy for moms to rest, nurse or pump, all while easily being able to reach that tall bottle of water, nourishing snack, magazine — and of course, your cell phone!

The fact is, motherhood brings a whole new meaning to the term “working mom”. You might be breastfeeding, snacking and emailing all at the same time. It’s work taking care of a baby. Even if you are handling one task at a time, you’ll want to have a proper, functional space to do your thing.

For example, a good rule of thumb is to set up the high-activity areas in your nursery like the glider and the changing table as you might a work desk. Be sure to have baby and mom necessities just a swivel or arm’s length away, including your feeding supplies, books, wipes, cell phone charger, throw, etc, etc. For safety reasons, you don’t want to leave your baby unattended, so make sure you can grab the essentials with one hand. (Especially for those moments when the other hand is covered in poo!).

For more information on our expert e-design services or fun design tips and inspiration, follow us on Instagram @youthfulnest. As a special thank you for taking the time to read this post, use MS15 at checkout for 15% off our ESSENTIAL or PREMIUM design package.

Best,
Lisa Janvrin
Founder // YouthfulNest