Having a new baby brings great excitement and anticipation along with love and energy to your home. The arrival of your newborn is one of life’s most significant changes as your family expands and new priorities emerge around your bundle of joy. It also brings a lot of new items into your home and the need to do some home organizing.
The gifts from the baby shower thrown by your family and friends, the one thrown by your colleagues at work, and from others in your life will soon find their way into your home. The big question will be how and where to store the clothing, the diapers and wipes, the bottles, the toys, and all the other accessories that are needed to tend to the needs of your newborn. And since many of these gifts are received before the arrival of your little boy or girl, some them will likely be intended for the future, such as clothing of larger sizes and toys for when your newborn is a little older. All of these items will need to be sorted and stored for future use. Here are a few suggestions for organizing your new nursery.
Organizing the dresser: When shopping for furniture for your nursery, think about the future use of the furniture. There are many great changing table style dressers on the market, but these are very limited in their usefulness after the months of changing diapers for your newborn dissipates. Consider instead a basic short dresser with a height of about 30-36 inches and attach a changing pad to the top. This piece of furniture will be much more adaptable when your little one becomes too mobile to safely be changed on the dresser. When setting up the dresser, do not think of it solely for clothing. Instead think about keeping the most needed items close at hand. When you are changing a dirty diaper, items such as diapers, wipes, diaper lotions and creams, clean outfits, and sleepwear should be in close reach. Most of these items can be stored in the top drawer of the dresser to be easily accessible. Organize the remaining drawers based on clothing type and season. Long pants and long-sleeved shirts can be kept in one drawer, and shorts, skirts, and short-sleeved shirts in another drawer.
Well placed shelves: You can setup your nursery to include shelves above the dresser where some of these smaller items can be stored such as cotton balls and swabs, diaper lotions and ointments, a pacifier, a thermometer, the much needed ball syringe, and perhaps a small stuffed animal to give your baby to help keep his/her hands occupied while you are changing a dirty diaper. Just remember that newborns soon begin to explore their world, so nothing should be kept within your baby’s reach.
Organizing the closet: Closets are not just for hanging clothes. This space can provide a lot of overlooked and underutilized space in the nursery. The fact is that when hanging newborn, and even toddler, clothing in the closet, much space remains below the clothing. Consider using this space to house an extra dresser in which you store the clothing that is too large for your baby or storing the off-season clothing such as shorts and swimwear during the winter. Also, placing shelf units in this potentially wasted space allows you to store toys and backup supplies like the super-sized box of wipes or mega-large box of diapers. If you are feeling very eager, you could install a full shelf organizing system that can be modified as your child grows, such as an elfa® system. This system could include an array of shorter space for hanging clothes along with drawers and open shelves for the present, and adapting it for larger clothing in the future.
Under the crib: A great place to store extra bedding is in shallow storage bins which can often be placed under the crib. And with a nice bed skirt, you can keep these bins out of sight.
Having a new baby in your home can be a challenging life event, but by implementing these tips, your nursery will be a haven of efficiency for those midnight diaper changes. If you are working on organizing your nursery, send us your pictures or comments. Do you have any nursery organizing tips?
