A Time to Make the Most of Small Spaces

“The children of whom you were bereaved will yet say in 

your ears,‘The place is too cramped for me; Make room

for me that I may live here.’

Sometimes, in this house, I feel like the city of Jerusalem in this passage. It was at one time desolate but then it became so full of people there was no room for the inhabitants. When you have a family on the big side (I hesitate to say big because there are hundreds of families with way more kids than we have) and live in a modest home, it's important to make the most of all the space you have. One way we have done this in our house was turning basically a storage room into our nursery. Four of our babies have called this room home at one time or another and now it belongs to Jena.

To me there is nothing sweeter in a little girl's room than an armoire. My aunt and uncle are moving and had a lot of furniture they were not taking with them. This piece is one we acquired from them and I'm so excited about it. I originally thought I'd use it in the playroom to store games and puzzles but once we realized that it would fit in Jena's room there was no question that was where it would go. It even matches her crib perfectly!
The adorable polka-dot baskets you see I picked up at The Christmas Tree Store and only paid $13 for all three and they come with each their own cover. In them I store all those little girl accessories (a problem I do NOT have with boys)like her bloomers, tights, socks and shoes. In the drawers I am able to put her more casual outfits. The bins under the dresses I use for her onesies and pj's. 

Here is one of the ways we made the most of a small space. There are stairs that lead to the attic in this room so Ben built a closet under them. It was a project that took him a day to complete and we used scrap wood someone had given us. This is where I used to put Jena's clothes but now can use the space for all those extras I was having a hard time making room for like extra bedding and hair accessories! 

When we first decided to use this room as the nursery the only dilema was where would we fit a changing station...the room is really small. After Ben thought about it for half a minute, he came up with this...

A built-in changing station that fits over the stairs but can also be removed when we need to access the attic or no longer need a changing station. I love this! It's the perfect height and very sturdy. The table goes in and out  easily and again, was simple and cheap to make. 

This room is just so perfect to sleep our babies since they don't need a lot of room anyway. I'm actually going to be really sad when we no longer need a nursery and have no idea what we'll use this space for when the time comes!