Monday, May 2, 2011

Nursery Closet Reconfiguration

We all know that babies grow up too fast. I used to wish little caterpillar can grow faster, but now I want her to slow down. I really miss the feeling of holding that soft little baby in my arms. Anyway. As she grows, our needs for storage in the nursery has been changing. CONSTANTLY! It was quite simple, like this. Then there were more cloth and toys, so we added a sweater organizer (for blankets) and more hangers. This worked fine for a long time. But now that she is much bigger, she wants to help mommy to hang the clothes up. Also, Stubborn wants the clothes sorted and set up the way he could understand, since he will be the one drop her off at daycare. And it became very hard to hold her still on the changing station. So it's time for our elfa shelves to go back into the closets again. Base on all the reasons above, mommy had to reconfigure her closet, a total transformation.

The actual plan involves painting the inside of the closet pink, and building a narrow shelving unit for the left end of the closet to hold accessories and small items. But I didn't want to paint it while all the windows are still closed, and I didn't have time to build shelf yet, so these will the in progress pictures. First, I removed the sliding doors. I like they don't take any extra space, but hate that we can only access half of the closet at a time. So, they had to go! Now that the doors gone, you can see better how the closet was set up. A metal shelving unit inside a builder standard closet. Oh, plus some canvas bins and a hanging sweater organizer. And this is the changing station made with two elfa shelves. Oh, I already removed the changing pad.
After some measuring, cutting, and painting, here is the new shelf and rod. Also, one elfa unit inside the closet. I had to remove the wheels, since they are not very stable, and we won't be moving it for a long time. This is when I noticed that the new shelf may not be level! I couldn't find my level, so trusted the baseboard. Stubborn thinks it's not a big deal, but it really bugs me. I will fix it one day. Oh, that little box on that new shelf holds all her socks and tights.Look, little caterpillar was inspecting the new closet. She was very excited to find the new rod at her level. To the left of the new shelf is where the narrow accessory shelf would be. For now I just hang a canvas shoe organizer there. Once the shelf installed, I will somehow change this organizer to a 2 by 5 (two columns of 5 next to each other), instead of a single column of 10. So, one column will hold her entire sets of outfits from Mon to Fri, while the second column holds the backup outfits.
I will paint her closet before our next vacation and leave the window open, so it will have time to air out. I will never let my baby sleep in a freshly painted room, even if I use the no VOC paint. I will post the updates once all are done, probably in a couple of months.

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