Go read the Disclaimer again. I am not a doctor. This is not medical advice. Seriously.
Your friends, family and real estate agent(s) will tell you a whole lot of stuff about resale value, fixer uppers, the benefits of being the cheap house in an expensive neighborhood or the beautiful house in the cheap neighborhood. Whatever. Here are a few items they probably won't mention.
Sooner or later, you're going to be stuck indoors with a toddler that needs to run. If your house supplies a big circle to run in, everyone will be a little less miserable. Make sure you don't plan on completely blocking access to part of the circle when you childproof (the whole circle path will need to be child-accessible for this to be useful). Classic circles usually include the kitchen, dining area and living/family room.
Have at least one room with a door that closes tightly and can be made to stay closed (with child proofing or a lock) that you don't intend for anyone to be sleeping in on a regular basis. It could be a living room (out of the path of the circle), a den or office, a spare bedroom. When you childproof and you encounter stuff you need to have access to, but cannot make safe within childproofed areas (computers, filing cabinets that don't lock, breakable artwork you can't bear to store), stick it in that room. You cannot move everything you own into that room (well, I suppose if it's big enough. . . ), but you can make a little oasis of stuff. I figure this is the basis for all those fairy tales about the castle with the locked door the hero(ine) isn't supposed to get into (but of course does). You'll find life with your kid less challenging if you can make this happen.
Outdoors is nice. And you can make your outdoors safe in ways that are hard to accomplish in public spaces (you can police it regularly for used condoms and cigarette butts, for one thing). But big yards are hard to watch, and unfenced outdoor space is basically letting your kid wander out into the street, which may or may not be a reasonable thing to do in your neighborhood. If you can bring your kid -- or a kid -- over to play in a yard before you buy a place, that would be ideal. Never mind broken glass; Teddy somehow cut his face next to his eye with a bit of grit. I live in fear of the day he finds poison ivy. The day the tree half fell over, when I heard it start to go, the first thing I did was figure out where it was relative to my child. Try to get the most obnoxious adult you can to look it over and tell you what the potential for serious danger is: to you, your child, random strangers, the fence, the house, trees, etc. In general, the more outdoors you own, the further you will have to travel to get to public outdoors space that has been made kidfriendly (e.g. the playground).
Playgrounds may have litter (half empty beer cans in a small town and maybe some cigarettes abandoned by teens; so far no used condoms), but they don't have propane tanks, well-heads, generators. And the playground here is completely fenced, which is hard to do in New England with the rocky soil and unpredictable boulders interfering with post hole digging.
A lot of old houses had doors at the top and bottom of the stairs (or at least at the bottom). Having felt a draft down the stairs in a well-insulated house in a mild New England winter, I really wonder why this practice stopped. In any event, check any stairs for gate-a-bility. Railings can really limit your options.
In an ideal world, the laundry is in the bathroom you'll be changing diapers in. It would be nice if it wasn't buried in the basement, down a set of stairs I keep tripping on. Learn from my troubles.
If the house has more than one floor, at least one toilet per living floor (basements and attics only count if you spend a lot of consecutive time in them) is really, really important.
The kitchen should not be isolated. You have to eat. Ideally, you would be able to see anywhere your child might be while you are finding and preparing something to eat for yourself, your child, etc. At the very least, you should be able to hear serious disasters in the making (or while in progress).
It's worth identifying ahead of time where some or all of the following are, so you know what your week in and week out life might be like:
You can move while pregnant or even with a toddler and have it work out just great if the place you move to is conveniently located to support all of your needs.
Unfortunately, while we were very conveniently located in Seattle (walkable to all kinds of stuff), it was never quiet (ever), it was often very loud (even late, late, late at night, and it was also never dark. Between street lights, building lights and traffic, you could read a book from all the light pouring through the windows at night. Literally. We all had trouble sleeping as a result. While my husband could (and often did) wear earplugs, I did not feel comfortable sleeping with Teddy with earplugs in. Roland with earplugs was also awful hard to rouse to come help out with the baby.
A General Discussion of Moving
Home: the Physical Locus of the Family
Copyright 2007 by Rebecca Allen.
Created February 20, 2007 Updated February 21, 2007