After carving out a cute little space for Milly in our room, we needed a home for all of her “things”. Our first thought was that she’d share dresser space with Emie – but what about late night diaper changes? Blowouts that required an outfit change? Diaper leakages that required new sheets? How would we navigate those scenarios? With babies you just never know but what I did know was that sneaking into Emie’s room long after she had fallen asleep for whatever baby related items we might find ourselves needing, wasn’t an ideal scenario.
Our room is small enough as is and when we made space for the crib, we had to say goodbye to our only dresser too so really…the only option we had was to dedicate 1 of the 3 closets in our room to Milly and all her things.
In order to make all the clothing logistics work, we invested in custom closets for all 3 closets in our master. Here’s where all my things ended up:
And this is where Sikmon keeps his:
Yes…he got the bigger closet. Insert eyeroll here.
Milly’s closet, or as we like to call it, the baby closet serves multiple functions. Not only does it house her clothing, bedding, and the like, we use it as a changing station too. We secured a changing pad atop a shelf set about waist high and it makes the perfect space for dirty diaper changes.
The shelf itself has a max load of 53 lbs plus we secured the Boaxel rails into the wall with several 75lb anchors so we’re still a ways off from reaching max weight capacity – and if she’s still in diapers by time she reaches 53 lbs…well…I’ll get back to you on that.
One of the selling points for the Boaxel closet system from Ikea is that it’s extremely affordable. This whole set-up cost us just over $100.
From top to bottom, our specific configuration consists of a shelf with some overhead storage, a hanging rod, another shelf that our changing pad sits atop of, and then a set of 4 drawers.
The top drawer holds all our diapers, wipes, creams and such. The drawer can be pulled all the way out and I can still fit inside the closet area for diaper changes making everything easy to reach as needed.
I tend to keep diapers here that are one size up because most the diaper changes that happen here are the ones that are right before naps and/or bedtime so I diaper Milly in a larger diaper right before putting her down to sleep to prevent leakage. The diapers we use on an every day basis are kept in our baby cart that sorta travels around the house with us depending on where we’re spending our day – usually the living room.
The 2nd (current size) and 3rd (one size up) drawer holds jammies, onesies, bottoms, in various sizes, and the bottom drawer is reserved for seasonal clothing (bathing suits/winter hats/etc), bibs and burp cloths, swaddles, sleep sacks, and such.
We’ve got an overhead hanging rod and I use a small portion of it to hang outfit-y type clothing: rompers, dresses, and such while making sure to keep the majority of overhead space clear so as not to crowd the changing space below.
Lastly, we added this over the door organizer not so much because we needed the extra storage but because we needed a place to toss dirty clothing and this was the only over the door hanging hamper, I could find. The added storage pockets are a nice added bonus.
I have all my travel pouches up top, then changing pad covers, and bedding / additional blankets below that.
I honestly wasn’t sure that we’d be able to contain all of Milly’s things to such a small space but we did it and I certainly don’t feel like we’re missing out on anything due to our space limitations.
Being a 2nd time Mom helped me pare way. Milly’s wardrobe is definitely smaller than Emie’s ever was but Emie had more clothes than she could ever possibly wear and often times after she grew out of a size, I was left with clothing that still had the tags attached. We’re certainly not having that problem this time around.
The other item I scaled way back on was bedding – we keep 3 of each type of bedding item: changing pad covers, sheets, blankets, etc. This way there’s usually always one in use, one that’s dirty, and one that’s a back-up just in case. So far, this has worked really well for us.
* to shop any of the organizational items from the baby closet, they’re all linked below *
Wipes case / Velvet Hangers / Wall Hook / Over the Door Organizer / Drawer Organizers / Storage Bins