Baby Closet Makeover
Posted on Thu, Apr 14, 2011
The countdown is officially on: T-minus 17 days until the big day when my wife and I are expecting our first child. Our checklist is looking pretty good: the hospital bags are packed, the car seat is installed, and the nursery is ready to go.
One of our favorite projects in the nursery was making over our baby’s closet. After several baby showers, car loads of hand-me-downs from older siblings, and 175 trips to Baby’s R Us, you can imagine the overwhelming amount of baby supplies that needed a home. Our nursery previously served as our home office, the office closet held a random collection of clothing and miscellaneous items that didn’t have a place when we moved into our home two years ago.
The closet was previously organized by a few rows of wire shelving that proved to be a poor use of space for the baby items we were planning to store. Five feet of long hanging space wasn’t exactly the most efficient way to store baby clothes that were less than two feet long!
After hours of ripping out the wire shelving, patching the many holes, and re-painting the interior of the closet, it was time for the fun part: designing and installing the new nursery closet! Using design software from The Stow Company, we were able to design a closet that fit our unique needs and was customized to fit our exact space. In the end, it was a fun experience for my wife and me to plan out the space and install the closet together.
For those of you wanting to design a nursery or kids closet system of your own, here are five design tips that helped us along the way.
- Lower the bar. Try a walk around the room on your knees (or better yet, enlist a child’s help). From this perspective, you'll soon find out what's hard to reach. Make it easy for your kids to pick up after playtime or hang up a sweater by lowering hooks, bars and shelves. Double and triple up on hanging space while your kids are small, placing the lowest bar where kids can reach their favorite outfits. The rods and shelves are adjustable so your closet can easily grow with your child.
- Keep it safe. Children (and sleep-deprived adults) are prone to bumping into things and grabbing onto anything nearby for balance or support. Stabilize structures that toddlers may topple. Remove their temptation to reach higher than they should by keeping off-limit items child-locked or out of sight. Choose “ouch-free” organizers with rounded edges.
- Label and teach. Show your kids where things are supposed to go with picture and word labels. Books. Blocks. Pants. Pajamas. While you build good habits, you can help kids make meaningful connections between words, illustrations and actual objects.
- Express without mess. Give your child an outlet for personal expression and a sense of responsibility for the room by designating shelves, tack boards or other special areas for artistic display. As they get older, your child may use these spaces to display trophies, aced report cards, or other items of inspiration.
- Gather and display. Tired of your child emptying out the dumpster-sized toy chest? Try providing smaller boxes, bins and baskets in easy-to-access places. In these, you can round up smaller toys, parts and pieces. See-through containers and low-wire baskets allow kids to choose what they want without upending the whole lot.
Have tips and design ideas from your baby or child’s closet? Please share your tips below!
- Mike
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