gender neutral nursery nook in a studio apartment
I'm so excited to share Isaac's nursery nook with you! This space is small but it was such a labor of love.
Living in a 1920s apartment means the internet offers very little when it comes to decor hacks. Almost everything on Pinterest told me to set my baby up in the closet or in a hallway but neither of those were options for me with my apartment's floor plan.
It took a lot of measuring and re-working and our community blessing us with all the gift cards to make this nursery nook come together. We love this apartment so I'm really glad we got to bring Isaac home here.
The overall vibe of the nook goes along with the rest of our space. I lean towards earthy tones so that's what I tried to tie that into Isaac's nook. I know it's currently trendy to pick design-forward baby gear that hardly looks like baby stuff. Part of me thinks the playfulness or "normal" baby stuff is fun but the other part of me — the part that lives in a studio apartment where I can't close the door on the cartoon covered baby swing — totally embraces the neutral trend.
I'm really proud of how I made this space cute and functional for our little guy. Interiors have never been my forte so the fact that I'm even sharing a home decor post is bananas. Enjoy!
CRIB CORNER
mini crib | organic mattress | sheets | snuggle me organic lounger | rocking chair | play gym
Most baby things, especially the ones you can conveniently register for or buy in store, don't lend themselves to small space living. I dove into Pinterest and YouTube to try to find some blueprint of a nursery nook that would work for us.
It turned out that the Internet didn't have an answer for me. The ever-popular closet nursery sounded amazing but was unrealistic given the dimensions of my closet.
Add to that all the quirks of my almost 100 year-old apartment: lack of electric outlets, a bay window, a built in hutch, and more doors than blank walls.
I briefly considered going for a full size crib but decided against it because I knew I wanted a rocking chair. And there was no way I was fitting a rocking chair into the nook with a full size crib. Instead, I chose a mini crib by Babyletto and it fit perfectly in this corner.
I didn't register for a white noise machine or night light and ended up buying one with one of the gift cards we received. We chose the Hatch Baby night light because it's also a sound machine and we can control everything on our phones.
CHANGING STATION
Our apartment has quite a few built ins. It's a storage blessing and a floor plan curse. Before getting pregnant, I struggled to find a purpose for this little space because it always ended up becoming a junk mail/clutter catch all. It turned out to be the perfect set up for a changing station!
Since we don't have laundry in our building, I knew I needed to find a changing pad I could wipe clean. I had hoped to get the Keekaroo but it ended up being too big for the little space in the hutch. After lots of searching on Amazon, I finally landed on this one by Bumbo and we love it!
I added the spice rack shelf to hold some ointment, lotion, and the wooden baby brush and comb. On the day I took these photos we also had the infant Tylenol out, too. :)
We store diapers and wipes in one of the smaller drawers in the built in. It keeps everything handy but hidden, which is great because — as you can see — counter space is limited.
STORAGE
patterned mini crib sheets | solid mini crib sheets
Our library of children’s books is pretty small (though it is growing) so we’re able to store it in one corner of the hutch. I love that most of the books we have are in English and Spanish. I grew up speaking English and Spanish (I don’t remember learning either language, I’ve always known both) so I’m really looking forward to passing that down to Isaac.
Ideally, I’d have another cute basket to store the extra crib sheets that you see rolled up in the corner but honestly, that would just be for looks. This works perfectly fine for us. I store clothes that are the next size up in the wicker basket and go through it every few months.
white basket | small woven basket
Can you tell we’re fan of baskets? Isaac’s hats and shoes are stored in the white basket and his socks live in the woven one. We keep all of his pajamas separate from the rest of his clothes. We keep them in a wooden wine crate we got from my dad.
We keep burp cloths, bibs and extra flannel rags we use as back up changing pads in the smaller of the drawers that we’ve reserved for Isaac. His clothes are stored in the big drawer. It’s not picture perfect or perfectly organized but it makes sense to me, ha!
infant car seat | bench | white basket | wire basket
We store our ring slings on the accordion rack and honestly? the car seat really does live on the floor in front of the closet. That’s just our reality of living in this small space. It doesn’t bother us, though. we rarely have to go into that side of the closet for anything.
As you can see, I didn’t do a whole lot of vignette styling before taking these photos. I’ve wanted to write this post for ages and I knew if I started styling I’d end up putting it off until our floors were perfectly clean and everything was perfectly refolded. I figured showing the real version would be better. At the very least, it’ll let me look back on this space in all its imperfect glory when we do leave it.
I hope this post gives you some inspiration for your own nursery nook! Especially if you live in an apartment that doesn’t have an open floor plan and that has lots of architectural character. Bringing a baby home to a studio apartment can be done! It just takes a little creativity!
