How To keep your nursery clutter free

With my first born child's due date a mere week away I finally feel like there has been some order restored to the layout of my home office/ nursery that has taken a bit of a battering in terms of neatness and organisation over the last few months.

People who already have children always tell you how much "stuff" they need but you never truly take them seriously until you start crossing things that you need off the checklist and accumulating the "stuff" in your 2 bed flat. And so the balancing act of trying to keep a functional home office on one half and a nursery on the other half that didn't look like a storage unit when I was on zoom calls.

My first word of advice is to try avoid accepting every hand me down from your friends and family with older kids who are trying to restore some of the space in their own homes. While these "gifts" are always well appreciated, there are a lot of them that you may only need when the baby is a few months older so without seeming unappreciative try and accept only the things that are relevant for the next three months or so.

Remember too that the recommended advice is that you have the baby sleep in your room for the first 6 months, so if this is something that you are intending on doing, then there is no need to rush out and get a cot-bed until the baby is ready to actually move into the nursery, this will save you a lot of space initially when the amount of nappies you need take up a considerable amount of space.

The things 2 main things that are most useful in an nursery for a new born is to have their clothes handy and easily available and to have a changing station set up as this will be one of the activities that you spend a good chunk of your day doing in the first few weeks so having all the nappy changing paraphernalia in one place where it is organised and easy to reach will make your lives a lot easier. There are plenty of organisers that are perfect for keep this all in one place available online.

Having the clothes organised by type and size in a draw nearby will also make things a lot simpler, especially when they decide to throw up on the outfit you have just put them in mid-way through the change and you have to improvise with a new one.

If your friends and family have run out of storage space for their children’s clothes that they want to pass on to you, then there is another solution for this. Using Vacuum storage bags to keep the clothes free from insects, dust and moisture while you store it in the loft, garage or at your parents will allow you to accept the hand me downs but not clutter up your draws with clothes that will not fit the baby for months. You also get the added bonus of opening all the bags again in a few months and finding out what cute outfits are in there for you to try out on your bundle of joy.

We have a nursing chair in our nursery as it is a nice quite little nook that looks like it may be a relaxing place to feed the baby, it remains to be seen whether this will actually be used or whether we will just feed him in whatever room we are in at the time. But the idea seemed nice to us. To help keep all the bits that are handy during feeding like muslins, wipes and snacks for mom in a handy easy to reach place, we hung an organiser from the wall which is essentially a piece of material with pockets in it that you can put bits and pieces. I am lucky enough to have a mum that is talented with a sewing machine that made a lovely one for us but these too can be bought online.

So this is my very 2 cents on keeping your nursery organised and prioritising the things you need most in there. I hope it helps some of you who were also a little overwhelmed by the amount of good that you have had to buy over the last few months.

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