and it doesn’t bother me one bit.
it’s funny: i am definitely not the kind of person who is generally all ‘function over form!’. i appreciate aesthetics — clean lines, modern touches, and pretty colors. as you all know, i love clothes, shoes, and stationery — and one of my greatest pleasures these days is shopping for annabel’s wardrobe. nothing makes me happier than dressing her up in cute little outfits, even if they aren’t the most practical.
but i’ve never been a ‘home’ person.
it may have a lot to do with the way i was brought up — a 30-second once-over is enough to tell any visitor that my parents valued practicality and didn’t really buy into the whole concept of decor. was our home comfortable? absolutely. relatively clean? sure. but my mother wasn’t [and still isn’t] the type to sit down with a copy of better homes and gardens and design her dream living room.
and as it turns out, neither am i.
i’m very conscious of time; less so of space. i do like things to be neat and organized, but beyond that i don’t tend to get excited about frills. i like minimalist and natural spaces with a lot of clean lines, but even that takes effort that i’m not really willing to put forth. the whole ‘DIY’ trend has sailed completely over my head, which is probably a good thing because i am just not the crafty type.
i may be in the minority, but i’m probably not alone. so i’m writing this post about our nursery to anyone out there who:
— was not drawn to any particular color scheme [not pink . . . not blue . . . and not green/yellow/grey/peach, either]
— does not want to spend time creating original murals for the nursery walls
— would rather have things look overly spare than overly decorated
i am proud to say that despite my minimalist [read: lazy] approach, i am completely satisfied with annabel’s living space. and i’m pretty sure that she is too. the walls are standard-issue apartment beige, we don’t have any wall art/personalized decor, and believe it or not there isn’t even a window.*
here’s what we do have . . .
1) a crib, changing table, and futon. yes, a futon. i would have preferred a rocker, but we live in a 2-bedroom apartment and the only way we could make a’s room into a guest bedroom [for when a’s grandparents visit, which has been pretty frequent!] was to put in a futon/sleeper couch. it’s actually pretty comfortable for those middle-of-the-night feedings.
our crib was a generous gift from the in-laws and i splurged on the matching changing table/drawer set — it converts into a dresser, so i figured that it would be a long-lasting piece of furniture. so far, i’m quite satisfied.
3) carpet. i love wood floors, but i’m really thankful that a’s room is carpeted. when she was little, we’d put a blanket down, but now i just let her have the run of the place. ours is spongy/padded enough that it’s comfortable for her to roll around on, and if she falls from a seated position it’s no big deal.
4) some kind of organizational system
super-cheap at target.
SUPER-important for corralling all of her toys and books. and the drawers even add a little bit of color to our otherwise neutral landscape. i heart this shelving system!
and believe it or not — that’s about it.
yes, it’s somewhat minimal. but it’s so functional! and therefore, i am 100% happy with our little nursery. i may care a bit more about these things once we move to a real house [ie, not an apartment]. but i’m still completely happy with our setup.
* but there’s a nice soft light during the day as we’re in a converted warehouse apartment. the wall doesn’t go to the ceiling — it’s actually a pretty decent situation as far as napping is concerned.
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10 Comments
Well believe it or not, our nursery is way more spare than yours. We do have a glider, which I love, but basically our decor consists of giant boxes of diapers — and now that we’re ordering in bulk from Amazon they don’t even come in a brightly colored box anymore! Oh, we do have some pictures on the wall…. of Dyls. But that’s basically it. Oh well. We prefer to use the living room during the day anyway, which is where we keep most of her toys.
And you know? I do like nice clothes and shoes, but I just can’t bear to spend the money on things that I won’t wear very often, or things that I will wear and then stain. Better to blend in as a med student anyway. As for shoes, I have terrible feet and most cute shoes, even flats, give me blisters or press painfully on my bunions or callouses. So I pretty much gave up on those too. Fortunately this doesn’t really bother me.
"My parents valued practicality and didn’t really buy into the whole concept of decor."….you’ve got THAT right, at least as far as I’m concerned. The only "decor" I care about is aural, not visual–that is, what piece of music is playing on the stereo at any given moment!
I like your minimalist style. (Very rare in the blogosphere indeed !)
No murals in our nursery unless you count the random scuff marks on the walls from the last tenant :). Our nursery is pretty spare as well. We have a crib, dresser/changing table and a glider. That’s it. We make guests sleep on the sofa bed in the living room. Right now the closet in the nursery is full of our things that were stuck there when we moved and need to be relocated (that’s today’s project), but hopefully we’ll have a nice amount of storage space after that.
Your article about green zone carpet cleaning was amazing. I have read your article and trust me it was all worth written. Thanks for sharing
Worth Reading. Thanks
Also minimalist here– I’d rather spend the $ on so many more functional things– outings, healthy food, books. There are people in the world who live in hovels– it makes me feel sick to think of spending hundreds of dollars on nursery furniture and decorations.
I LOVE this post! I’m right there with you…we live in a small 2 bedroom apartment with 2 children (ages 2 and 4) and am more concerned about space saving than decor. The walls are that same standard apartment beige and their "nursery" (which was really just a corner of our room) consisted of a crib, changing table, and that’s about it. Now that they are older, they share a room, which is just as sparsely decorated-white bed, white dresser, bookshelf. They do have a few pictures on the wall now, but those were all gifts. For some reason I have a hard time spending $ on home decor. (like you, my mom wasn’t so into that either) Sometimes I see these pictures of elaborate nurseries online and wonder if my children somehow missed out. But then I think about having to put all of that together (inference to be made here: I am lazy about decorating.) and it really doesn’t interest me. I just hope my kids aren’t in therapy in 20 years telling their therapist that it all started when they didn’t have a fancy nursery with a theme! 😉
I am all about functionality as well. Clara’s nursery is a little more "fru fru" but that was all my mom’s touches (she’s super crafty and has awesome home vision. .. me = not at all.)
LOVE that Target organizational shelving you purchased. I think we will be needing something like that eventually. We are in a house but it’s rather small and we don’t have a lot of extra space for toys and we definitely don’t have an extra area of the house or extra room to designate as a playroom.
I am so embarrassed sometimes since I haven’t decorated Neil’s nursery. We have the same problem, its a nursery/guest room and its been inhabited by guests (in-laws) for 6 months now. I can only personalize it to suit a baby decor once they leave in Jan. I like the idea of having a functional nursery.