In space-poor Hong Kong even the little people can feel crowded out. On a recent trip to Ikea in Causeway Bay, I saw one woman struggling to pull her two-year-old daughter away from the children's play kitchen. The woman was also wrestling with her mobile phone - trying to persuade her own mother to install said kitchen in her flat. 'But ma,' she said, 'can't you please reconsider? You know [little granddaughter] loves to play with it and we don't have any room in our flat - it's already stuffed full with furniture and toys.'
It's a common problem in Hong Kong - what to do in a small flat when you have children? And how do you design so that it's entertaining enough to keep them in the corner while you grab a cup of coffee and a bite to eat?
Architect and interior designer Jill Lewis says that when designing for a small space it is important to evaluate the area you have. 'Don't try to do too much,' Lewis says. 'Children don't respond well to cluttered, chaotic spaces any more than adults do. They like their environment to be quite orderly (even though they may disrupt that order often). If their toys and clothes are a mess they get bored very quickly.'
Lewis says the key is intelligent storage solutions that are easy for children to use themselves. 'If you don't take the time to teach children to tidy up their own toys, you have to be prepared to do it until they move away from home,' she says. Lewis suggests keeping everything at the child's level, whatever their age.
As a mother of two, with another due in November, Lewis says she has learnt that big, traditional toy boxes are useless, because even though it's easy to dump everything inside when playtime is over, a big messy jumble of toys means kids can't find anything the next time they play and lose interest in what they already have.
'If you don't have drawers, use bins that are small enough for even toddlers to pull from the shelf. Dedicate each bin to just one type of toy so that kids can put all the parts and pieces back in one spot.'