Waste not want not

Our apartment in HK is small. All HK apartments are small, and ours is probably considered quite big, but with two small bedrooms and no storage to speak of it is starting to seem smaller as Eve acquires more stuff.

If we were in the UK then this is when the loft and those funky bags where you can vacuum seal them would come in useful. We could put everything into the loft and forget about it until if and when number 2 comes along. My sister did this and, despite having a boy as her number 2, she has managed to offload all the pink clothes onto us and I have not had to buy a single outfit for Eve yet. However, in HK this option isn't available to us.

Most of the clothes we are giving away, although all of my friends have had or are having boys so not much luck there. H, our nanny, has given some to her niece who has just had a girl. This still leaves us with big stuff like the baby rocker, Eve's first car seat. All of this causes us two problems. Firstly, it is big and we don't have space as it is surpassed by the need to store rocking horses and pink bikes. Secondly, it was pretty expensive and I would quite like to use it for number 2 if it/he/she comes along so I don't want to give it away.

One of the Boy's colleagues is about to have his first and has only just moved to HK. After a bit of a spring clean the baby rocker has gone to them and they seem very grateful. We can take it back should we need it in the future and until then it becomes their storage problem. The car seat was relegated to under the dining table (like we ever have dinner parties anymore!), where the cat has adopted it as just about the only place in the flat she can sleep where Eve can't get to her.