Our little baby corner

Our house is kind of funny. We have three bedrooms upstairs and two downstairs. But between water seepage and evil cats, and terrible siding and thin carpets over concrete floors, our basement is not the nicest of places. Because we don't own the house, we're not really willing to spend the money it would take to make it better, so aside from getting rid of the evil cat and fixing the eaves troughs, we haven't done much. This means that although we have lots of theoretical space in our house, we don't have much bedroom space in practical terms. One room is Dave's study, and we like being able to close the door so that our books don't get spread all over the house and damaged and the bookshelves don't get climbed on. One room is the boys' room, and one is ours. When Aaron was born, the boys' room was only technically theirs -- they both still slept with us, and it just contained their clothes and the tv and the spare bed. But now, they actually sleep there, and the room is full of their stuff.

So, since we didn't want to move all Dave's stuff into the a-cursed basement (he hates our basement and it would make him very grumpy), and the baby will be sleeping with us anyway, I decided that we would take the horrible doors off our closet and use the corner it created for the baby's stuff.


Here it is: two hanging sweater organizers in lieu of drawers, a change table and some wall pockets.
The bottom of the change table has all the cloth diapers and covers, nicely organized in my new fabric baskets (with Aaron we used the make-piles-and-hope-they-don't-collapse-into-each-other method. It wasn't very effective). And the wall pockets will hold the snappis (the non-poky modern version of pins) and diaper cream and the like (with Aaron we used the line-it-up-along-the-edge-of-the-change-table-and-hope-it-doesn't-get-knocked-off method. Again, not terribly efficient at 3 am). Voila -- one changing station. I just need some creams and a bucket with a lid to act as a diaper pail and we're done.


I must say I am quite proud of these wall pockets. I made them based on the design in Handmade Home, Soulemama's second book. She suggests using a repurposed wool blanket, but I couldn't find one around town (land of polyester again) so I used a vintage pillowcase I found, which fits nicely and is just heavy enough. The pockets are bits of fabric from my stasth.



Andrew decided he wanted to help me applique the bird onto the one pocket, and I used my very rudimentry embroidery skills to stitch the word on the other.

So there you have it. Not Appartment Therapy, or Martha Stewart by any stretch of the imagination. But not bad for me, considering my general lack of decorating / organizing skills.