Organizing a Baby Nursery

Due to the recent birth of our beautiful baby girl, Nora Faith, I’ve rounded up an All-Star list of moms who effortlessly seem to manage work, home, family, life, and everything in between! You can read all their words of motherly wisdom here, as well as how they manage to “do it all” while still living a life they love.

I’ll be sharing my own thoughts and baby updates soon enough, but right now, I’m simply soaking up their trusted advice while cuddling with my new baby girl! 

The following is written by Laura from I’m An Organizing Junkie:

Whenever I visit my family in Ontario I try to help them with an organizing project wherever I can. I’ve done my sister’s kitchen, my sister’s entryway closet and my brother’s bookshelf. It’s fun for me, and they are happy for the assistance. Especially since it always takes less time than they anticipate it will.

Last year when I was visiting, I helped my sister organize the nursery for her second daughter. The room had all the main elements but did require a little TLC.

The plan was to make room for the changing table and a chair, find a home for the totes of “to grow into clothing”, and make it a welcoming, restful place for my little ladybug to sleep — here is the “before picture”.

With my plan in place, I was ready for the second step in the PROCESS which is to remove… and remove I did. 

Organize the big stuff first.

Everything but the big furniture got pulled out into the hallway or another room. Once I had the space opened up I could do a little space planning to see how I was going to fit everything back in.

Utilize every available space.

Once the furniture was in place we could start organizing the clothes. Since my sister had excellent cubby storage that wasn’t being used to its full potential, we decided to put some of the next size clothing in those and that helped free up a few totes.

Labels can be easily created for these fabric bins using self laminating sheets threaded with string and then tied to the handles.

We also brought in the changing table and that has three big drawers underneath for diapers/wipes, sleepers, crib sheets, blankets, socks, etc.

Make room for baby clothes and accessories.

We organized shoes, booties and hats using the Koala Baby Organizer (purchased from Babies R Us) behind the door which is often neglected space. Clothes a couple of sizes out were either hung up in the closet or added to cubbies in the closet. Others were stored in totes under the crib, another often neglected space. Clothes that weren’t going to be needed for at least another year yet went up in the attic out of the way.

The makeover was a huge success and my sister now has an organized and functional nursery for her new baby girl!

Here’s one more before & after photo:

I’m really happy with the way it turned out, especially since we only had a short window of time to do it — and we had a very cute 2 year old helper who had different ideas of how things should be stored {mainly all over the floor of course!}

How do you organize your baby and kids’ rooms?

Laura is a wife and mother to three great kids, lives in Alberta, Canada, and is an addict of all things organizing, especially containers. She is addicted to the high that comes with living a life of order and simplicity and is always looking for her next “fix”. You can find her blogging regularly and sharing her passion over at I’m an Organizing Junkie, and her organizing book, Clutter Rehab: 101 Organizing Tips & Tricks to Become an Organization Junkie and Love It!, is now available in stores.