Regain Your Nursery Floor Space - Storage Tricks And Tips

Generally speaking, babies are small. So why on earth do we need so much stuff for their needs? And where do you put it all? In this article I reveal some top tips from parents on how to store all of your baby's bits and bobs without having to give up your own bedroom to use as a storage cupboard.



I remember when we had our first child. We had earmarked the spare room as the nursery, bought a couple of boxes of nappies, a few armfuls of clothes, a mobile and other essentials. It looked a lot, but there was still a bit of floor space. Then we got the cot, and the baby changing unit, and the nursing chair.

Then we realised that in order to put our darling little baby into his cot we'd pretty much have to throw him in there from the landing. We practiced with a cushion, and managed a pretty decent 85% success rate.

We decided that our success rate wasn't quite good enough, and so had another think. Talking with other parents and thinking back to how we coped I thought it would be helpful to collect together a few top tips for coping with storing all of your baby's items more efficiently.

You certainly don't want to be tripping over things in your child's nursery, especially if you happen to be holding them at the time, and neither do you want to be floundering about desperately looking for the wet wipes while holding a poo covered wriggly mess that's in danger of weeing any second if you don't get a nappy on right away. (That's a particular danger with baby boys by the way - and yes, I know.)

First of all, take a look at the cot. Many cots have a rather odd design when you think about it. The mattress base is a good foot or two above the floor, yet the sides come right down to the floor, or very near it. Why?

It makes sense to make more use of the space underneath your cot, so look out for cots which either have a shelf underneath the base, or simply allow you to slide boxes or baskets of things underneath. It's a great place to store those large bumper packs of nappies.

Nappy storage bags are a boon. Often you end up pulling nappies out of the box they came in, and because of this you end up with that huge box sitting in the middle of the room taking up space. You can find a number of gorgeous nappy holders, often disguised to look like fluffy animals, and these attach either to a wall, or hang from the ceiling or the back of the door.

You can ram a good twenty or so nappies in there at least, sometimes up to fifty, and this makes it much more convenient as well as saving a good deal of space. The back of the door is a great place to store things as it clears the floor considerably.

Be ruthless. You can easily find that at least a drawer full of clothes no longer fit, don't yet fit, or aren't suitable. Babies grow quickly, and so it is important to check through the drawers, cupboard or shelves to identify clothes which your baby has grown out of, either selling them or packing them away in storage.

Clothes which are too large can be stored elsewhere until needed, and if you have a large winter coat in your child's nursery, and it's July, you may find it better to put this away elsewhere. Only store clothes in your child's nursery which they are likely to need over the next couple of weeks.