When designing a child’s bedroom or nursery all too often the decisions about storage tend to come quite far down the list of essentials. With the pressing matters of colour schemes and décor it can be all too easy to overlook the essential need for practical storage solutions. Bedroom storage needn’t stop at toy boxes as there are a number of stylish options out their.
With the arrival of a new child parent soon come to realize the necessity of designated areas for all the nik-naks and accessories that go with modern parenting and the need to house the fast growing toy collection, book library and the many other necessities of life.
With a baby the key needs are reasonably straight forward but with a little planning a room and its storage capability can grow with the child to ensure the bedroom doesn’t become a cluttered mess.
Babies main needs are simple; somewhere for clothing, a place for bedding, storage for changing paraphernalia such as nappies and wipes and some form of toy storage for the many gifts that although may not be appropriate now will be treasured toys for later life.
A great solution for bedding and toys is a toy box and blanket box. In fact with the stylish designs on the market toy boxes can be used for either purpose. In addition many modern changing stations allow for the accessible storage of nappies, wipes and other changing gear. Modern toyboxes also tend to feature a number of safety features to prevent small hands from becoming trapped and stop lids from slamming.
At this point however it is always useful to think ahead. Baby won’t be baby for long and with toddler hood comes a whole new set of challenges. One item overlooked by many is the need for somewhere to store the vast libraries of books the majority of toddlers seem to accumulate. There are now many bookcases designed purely for children’s bedrooms in a variety of designs from fire stations to castles to fairy castles allowing them to add extra style to a child’s bedroom.
The next overlooked area is shelving! Shelves are a great way of preventing the floor resembling a bomb site and also can prevent young hands from reaching things they shouldn’t. A set of sturdy shelves can house anything and again many stylish designs exist to compliment the look of your nursery or child’s bedroom.
At the heart of a child’s room is likely to be clothes storage in the form of wardrobes and chests of drawers. Designers now cater for the child market with a range of funks designs and features such as double railed wardrobes that increase the usability of the furniture. When choosing furniture spend as much as you can comfortably afford as good furniture will last for years and repay the investment whereas inferior products tend to wear out and fall apart before your child has outgrown them.
It is also important to give a little thought to the future. The obsession with Pooh may be emphatic now but 12 months down the line the expensive Tigger Toybox, Eeyore Wardrobe and Pooh bed might not be flavour of the month. It is therefore sensible to buy neutral furniture and create the look with accessories such as lampshades, wallpaper, borders and curtains to ensure you don’t end up spending a vast fortune on a fad.
So with this information in mind it’s time to plan for that nursery or bedroom and head out looking for toxboxes. ——— Gary Clay is an expert on toy boxes and a retailer of a number of stlylish nursery storage solutions.