Another week has gone by, which means it’s time for another One Room Challenge update! We’re heading into the home stretch, and there is still a lot to do in order to make this room look complete. Decorative elements aside however, one of my goals for participating in this 6-week challenge was to truly make a complete and usable room for baby. As such, this week I took a break from the decorating projects and turned my attention instead to function and organization. From the closet to the drawers, this week was all about carving out more storage and identifying the best solutions for all of our baby items!

Week 5 of this One Room Challenge is all about organization! Come see how I outfitted the nursery closet and drawers to hold everything baby needs!

Before I dive into the nitty gritty of the organization projects we tackled this week, here is a quick glimpse of where we are at right now. If you’re just joining in this room’s progress, you can catch up below:

Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4

Week 5 of this One Room Challenge is all about organization! Come see how I outfitted the nursery closet and drawers to hold everything baby needs!

Closet Organization

It’s been a few weeks since you last saw the closet. After constructing a simple built-in and adding some wallpaper, it sat just like this while we worked away on some other elements in the room.

Week 5 of this One Room Challenge is all about organization! Come see how I outfitted the nursery closet and drawers to hold everything baby needs!

This past weekend, Greg spent a few hours bringing my closet built-in visions to fruition!

Week 5 of this One Room Challenge is all about organization! Come see how I outfitted the nursery closet and drawers to hold everything baby needs!

I am planning on going into detail about what all we did here and why we made the decisions we did in another post. The short version is that I really wanted some functional AND aesthetically-pleasing storage (since we took the doors off) that would allow us to sort and store all the baby items we’ve accumulated from Henry and will eventually be used by this baby. I wanted the project to be as simple as possible (since I really couldn’t be much help!), so we went with a Closetmaid system from The Home Depot. Using a combination of a few new things as well as some shelves we already had, we ended up with exactly the storage capability and look I was going for!

Week 5 of this One Room Challenge is all about organization! Come see how I outfitted the nursery closet and drawers to hold everything baby needs!

Once Greg had the shelves in place, it was my turn to get to work. I had to transform this somewhat organized mess into something a little more streamlined and nicer to look at!

Week 5 of this One Room Challenge is all about organization! Come see how I outfitted the nursery closet and drawers to hold everything baby needs!

Using some small hangers from HomeGoods and some TJENA boxes from IKEA…

Week 5 of this One Room Challenge is all about organization! Come see how I outfitted the nursery closet and drawers to hold everything baby needs!

…I was able to find a home for pretty much everything!

Week 5 of this One Room Challenge is all about organization! Come see how I outfitted the nursery closet and drawers to hold everything baby needs!

Back before the One Room Challenge even started, I spent some time going through and inspecting all of Henry’s old clothes that we’ve saved. I tossed anything that was really soiled or worn, and categorized the rest by size and put them back into the beaten-up file storage boxes you can see a few pictures up.  The file storage boxes hold clothes really nicely, and I was worried the IKEA boxes wouldn’t be big enough. I was quite relieved to see that not only did everything fit in them, but I actually think these boxes hold kids’ clothes a bit better! For the time being, I used some painter’s tape to keep track of the sizes. I am still brainstorming what I want to do for labels here!

Week 5 of this One Room Challenge is all about organization! Come see how I outfitted the nursery closet and drawers to hold everything baby needs!

The boxes hold clothes according to size, but as I was going through everything, there were some things that just didn’t seem best sorted that way. Shoes, pajamas, hats, bathing suits, and socks are all things that Henry moved in and out of at different rates than his clothing. As such, I used the three wire basket drawers to hold these items (which was also a good call because these collections were a bit larger than each stage of clothes). You can probably guess that I’m not loving the “mess” that is visible through the wire drawers, but I have a plan in mind to remedy that!

Week 5 of this One Room Challenge is all about organization! Come see how I outfitted the nursery closet and drawers to hold everything baby needs!

We don’t tend to hang a lot of baby clothes, but I was sure to include a short rod for the few things that are nice to have on hangers. The shot below also reveals a bit more of my intention behind this specific closet design. The space between the crib and the closet was really the only logical place for the rocker. But there was absolutely no room for a small table to hold things for feeding sessions (now) and story time (down the road). The white built-in bench now serves as a great side table to the chair, as well as a folding surface for clothes.

Week 5 of this One Room Challenge is all about organization! Come see how I outfitted the nursery closet and drawers to hold everything baby needs!

I have some tweaking and arranging still to do here obviously, but I am thrilled with how this whole corner turned out!

Week 5 of this One Room Challenge is all about organization! Come see how I outfitted the nursery closet and drawers to hold everything baby needs!

The Dresser Drawers

Admittedly, a lot of the storage in the closet is “deep storage” (i.e., clothes baby won’t wear for a while). My intent was for items we use/need less frequently to go up on the high shelves in the closet, and our more day-to-day type stuff would mostly be held in the dresser. As baby grows in and out of items, we can move them down and back up as necessary. We’ve got some time to fine tune this area before baby comes, but I wanted to get this area up and running too!

Week 5 of this One Room Challenge is all about organization! Come see how I outfitted the nursery closet and drawers to hold everything baby needs!

My first step was to line the drawers. No, this isn’t at all necessary, but it sure does make me happy! I had just enough spare wallpaper to line all 6 drawers…

Week 5 of this One Room Challenge is all about organization! Come see how I outfitted the nursery closet and drawers to hold everything baby needs!

…as well as make some drawer dividers for the top 2 drawers!

Week 5 of this One Room Challenge is all about organization! Come see how I outfitted the nursery closet and drawers to hold everything baby needs!

I will be sharing the details of both of these projects later; but for now, you can bet the insides of these drawers make me pretty giddy! It was a little tough to organize these drawers when I really don’t know quite what we’ll be using this time around, so I gave it my best go knowing we will fine tune once we get into a rhythm with baby. The top two drawers (the ones with dividers) are holding jammies and swaddle blankets…

Week 5 of this One Room Challenge is all about organization! Come see how I outfitted the nursery closet and drawers to hold everything baby needs!

…and the other holds all the cute itty bitty stuff like socks/booties, bibs and hats!

Week 5 of this One Room Challenge is all about organization! Come see how I outfitted the nursery closet and drawers to hold everything baby needs!

The next two drawers down hold newborn clothes (near drawer) and extra crib sheets and changing pad covers (far drawer).

Week 5 of this One Room Challenge is all about organization! Come see how I outfitted the nursery closet and drawers to hold everything baby needs!

The last two drawers hold the next two sets of clothes (6 and 9 months). I have space in the closet if I want to move these back in there, but I thought it might be handy to have the next couple sizes pulled down. We’ll see!

Week 5 of this One Room Challenge is all about organization! Come see how I outfitted the nursery closet and drawers to hold everything baby needs!

The cart right next to the dresser currently holds more swaddle blankets and some baby carriers. My plan is to outfit the other two shelves with diapers and toys…

Week 5 of this One Room Challenge is all about organization! Come see how I outfitted the nursery closet and drawers to hold everything baby needs!

So there we are 5 weeks into this nursery makeover! The room feels thiiiiiis close to being done. and I am honestly looking forward to pulling together the final elements this coming week. What’s left to do you ask? Here is my final checklist!

  • Frame and hang art
  • Hang mobile
  • Label clothing boxes
  • Paint burp cloth caddie
  • Stock up on baby items (i.e., diapers, wipes)
  • Star garland for dresser
  • Shop for a few necessities (i.e., hamper)
  • Arrange shelves
  • Stage and photograph

Week 5 of this One Room Challenge is all about organization! Come see how I outfitted the nursery closet and drawers to hold everything baby needs!

Although we have plenty of time until baby arrives (we hope!), it will be so nice to have this room completely done so I can turn my attention to a few other things in the final weeks. Be sure to stay tuned to Instagram for sneak peeks of a few final updates and come back next Thursday for the final reveal!

Week 5 of this One Room Challenge is all about organization! Come see how I outfitted the nursery closet and drawers to hold everything baby needs!

Last but not least, don’t forget to check in all the other participants’ progress by clicking here!

See You Soon!
Megan