Informed, perfectly at ease with home automation technology, mindful of energy consumption and the use of non-toxic materials, the ever-growing number of mum bloggers are trying to reconcile the need for a child-friendly home with that of a space suited to remote working.
They have made multitasking their unshakeable creed and possess organisational skills bordering on the virtuosic — so much so that they manage not only to juggle the thousand demands that weigh on anyone raising children, but also to dispense advice, information and tips of the parenting trade on web pages they have created and constantly update themselves. The so-called mum bloggers, who have by now become a point of reference for women navigating the adventurous paths of motherhood on a daily basis, find themselves facing the dual challenge of creating a child-friendly home while at the same time having a space in which to carry out, albeit remotely, their professional work. They are for the most part freelance journalists or communications professionals, and it is not uncommon for their experiences of managing the domestic household — including domestic dilemmas related to furnishings and energy — to form the subject of some of the most popular posts on their blogs. Speaking to them in person and taking a slightly closer look at the family ménage of some of these shrewd women reveals a world even more varied and interesting than expected.
"One of the most common mistakes made by new parents is overheating the home they live in," observes Silvana Santo, mother of two and champion of the same environmentalist values that drive her blog, unambiguously titled Una mamma green. "It is not at all healthy for a newborn to be exposed to a temperature above 20–21 degrees, nor to come into contact with toxic materials. That is why I chose to paint the walls with water-based paints made from harmless substances. I naturally favour solar panel energy systems to reduce CO2 emissions into the atmosphere, and I try to optimise consumption by using double glazing and thermal insulation. But one of the most useful aids comes from the home automation 'apps' that everyone can now install on their smartphone — for example in summer, to operate the blackout blinds remotely and thereby keep cooling costs down. On this point, using an inverter air conditioner, which modulates its output according to the surrounding temperature, is far preferable to a conventional one."
The precautions and strategies essential to reconciling children and work multiply exponentially in the case of the so-called blended family, such as that of Valentina Piccini, creator of the blog Mamme a spillo, who draws on her well-tested experience of sharing a home with four children of her own, plus her partner's previous two, for a total of six children. "We chose at the time to live in a three-storey farmhouse in Tuscany, renovating it to suit our present and future family needs," Valentina recounts. "We want our children to experience contact with nature from an early age, and in fact at school they are already beginning to get to know the vegetable garden and the idea of growing the vegetables they will later eat. At home we have divided all the spaces with them in mind: the bedrooms are designed as doubles, in the sense that each one currently houses two children and is half taken up by their respective wardrobes, but when they grow up the room will be able to be divided in two so that each child has their own. Similarly, the 600 square metres of the property are already set up to be adapted in the future by creating three separate residential units — in other words, separate apartments for adult children and parents. At the moment I have converted my office and working space from the old cellars, which I have renovated."
It is therefore inevitable that the new arrivals — the children — immediately become the focal point of every housing decision and the undisputed protagonists of the domestic universe, as Lucrezia Sarnari, author of the blog Ceraunavodka, also confirms. "Even though my partner works as a designer by profession, dividing up the spaces becomes almost impossible to maintain when there is a small child in the house," Lucrezia admits. "The sofa and the big bed become almost exclusively theirs, and I work mostly in the living room, setting up my computer here and there. And so much care goes into arranging and furnishing their bedroom." On this subject, in addition to the sensible suggestion of painting the walls in soft shades that help children relax, a growing number of experts today echo the advice — inspired by the Montessori method — of placing around the house a few pieces of furniture on a smaller, child-friendly scale (little chairs and low beds, shelves at their height, and so on) to encourage their spontaneous interaction with the environment.
The increasingly widespread phenomenon of so-called mommy blogging thus paints a rather distinctive sociological portrait of the new generation of Italian mothers who are connected and internet-savvy. Homemakers and workers, (almost) without interruption, these new domestic angels are characterised as women who are far more pragmatic, well-informed and technologically minded than their predecessors — capable of handling the most immediate and hands-on tasks of childcare, but also of taking personal, well-considered decisions about the housing choices best suited to creating the ideal environment in which to raise their "little human cubs."