A family of three can only live in 265 square feet for so long. For Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan; his wife, Sara; and their baby, Ursula—who had been sharing a minuscule one-bedroom apartment in New York City—the breaking point came after one year. "Sara had been ready to move, but I loved our old apartment," says Gillingham-Ryan. "We were lucky to have a girl who is calm, which made our first year doable. I think for our sake and sanity and marriage, though, we needed more room." Which is a rather large statement for the 41-year-old interior designer, who made a name for himself championing smaller spaces on his home-design blog, Apartment Therapy, and its offshoots—including Oh Dee Doh, geared to decor-minded parents. Not to mention that their jewel-box one-bedroom is one of the 40 homes showcased in his new book, Apartment Therapy Presents: Real Homes, Real People, Hundreds of Real Design Solutions (Chronicle).
Even so, it was time to move on. (And it's not like the family went very far—or very big: The new place is on the same block as the old one, and is still decidedly un-McMansion-y at 700 square feet.) In many ways, the relocation enabled Gillingham-Ryan to personally experience the dynamic he often sees in the expectant couples who hire him for interior design: a woman who is stressed out by her living arrangements and a man who feels as if they have all the time in the world to get around to redecorating. "I have to broker it so the husband is more proactive and the wife is a little more calm," he says.
For those couples who are handling baby-driven design issues without the help of a decorator, there's Oh Dee Doh. Launched last year and named for the first sound Ursula (now 18 months old) ever uttered that resembled an honest-to-goodness word, it provides parents with a fast feed of design advice and real-life nursery tours. The website also offers a window into Gillingham-Ryan's minimalism. He swears, for example, that new parents need only a handful of things. "You can start with very little and add more as you need it," he says.
And even as children get older, he doesn't believe in turning the whole house into a romper room. Gillingham-Ryan—who was a Waldorf schoolteacher for six years before launching his design business in 2001—falls back on his teaching days for rationale: "An important part of Waldorf is that kids want to grow up, and they want you to be a role model—so your space should be for adults," he says. And what is for the little ones doesn't have to be all that fancy. "We have a crib that isn't an heirloom and wasn't expensive, but it's just right for us," he says. "Simplicity is what we're after." Spoken like a man who started his family in 265 square feet.
