Tips for Furnishing Baby's Room Inexpensively
by Chris Houston
1) Hanging Letters on Wall of Baby's Name
You don't have to be artsy to furnish a baby's room inexpensively. But it certainly helps.
My wife and I wanted to decorate our first newborn's room in a creative manner. Decorating a kid's room can be as fun as learning the ABC's. Speaking of letters, many parents will try and spell their baby's name and hang it on the wall. This might be the easiest of all the decorations you can provide for the furnishing of a baby's room.
Go to the local arts and crafts store and look for the wooden letters that spell your baby's name. For us, it was as simple as finding a J,A,C,O and B. Then choose your color(s) and buy your paint. You may want to choose wood letters that have a three dimensional design that allow you to do a color and then shade the background. This gives it a lot more depth when you hang the letters on the wall. Some letters will come with wall hangers and some will need to have them attached. Find the ones with hangers if available to save you time and anguish. After a lot of thought we chose the colors red and blue. Since there were 5 letters in Jacob's name we alternated the letters and painting. So the letter J is mostly red with a background of blue. The letter A is mostly blue and hosts a red backdrop. It's really a simple thing to do and I am sure our now 2 year old will soon be learning the letters of his own name by reading his own wall.
The total price was less than 20 dollars for this and you might be able to furnish this little decoration just by looking on eBay. We've pulled them up for you. Click here
2) Sports Hanger for Boys
Another great idea to furnish your baby's room came directly from the brains of my wife. She is so artsy and little things like this definitely add to the color and joy of a baby's room. We bought a wood hanger for hats. In the arts and craft store there were also several wood basketballs, footballs, soccer balls and baseballs. All of these were already pre-painted saving us some work. Most arts and craft stores will have such items that you can use to create this.
The hanger has about 4 knobs or racks that you can put your hats on. Using the same method as before you can paint the hanger any color you want. Pink for girls or blue or red for boys. Whatever you choose. That's the best thing about furnishing a kid's room-- it allows you to be even more creative in choosing colors and schemes. We painted the hanger two colors and then proceeded to attach the sports elements to the top of it with glue. The result was an inexpensive place to put his 20 little hats up high instead of on the floor or in his toy box. You can replace sports items with dolls,dresses and ponies for girls.
Total cost of this venture is usually 10-15 dollars and it may last for 6-7 years. If you're not very handy and want something ready made, again, check out the prices on eBay
3) Stackables
I love stackables and they aren't expensive. Other than a dresser and bed or crib, this is the only thing that is truly needed in furnishing a baby's room. You can use stackables to house diapers, clothes or toys. They are so invaluable that I can't even begin to describe how much these helped out in Jacob's early days. Now that he can reach them it sometimes makes for a little bit of a mess because they are so accessible. But these are relatively inexpensive at Walmart, Target and many other local shopping centers.
Total cost of stackables? It will depend on how much space you have and how much you want to use. That's another benefit of stacking is you will take up less space. If space is an issue, then furnishing your baby's room with stackables might be the way to go. And it's more inexpensive than spending big bucks on an additional dresser.
4) Sentimental Picture Frames
Our aunt sent us one amazingly creative gift that couldn't have cost much other than time and a little brain power. Buy a wooden picture frame that has depth to it. One of those picture frames that looks like a box because it's so thick. Yet it allows for someone to put arts and crafts inside of it. Now there are a g azillion ways you can go with this but I will tell you what she did and we love it.
She took some thick papers and apparently made some cut-outs that she could put within the frame. One was a set of hands resembling his little ones when Jacob was born. True it wasn't the exact paw prints of his but it was the cutest little cut-out that she had glued to the back of the 3-D frame. She put his birth weight and time of arrival next to the hands. She also had cut-outs of a stork, a stroller and a little baby out-fit that all came with specialized momentos of the day he was born and his personal information.
In Jacob's case, she also centered a huge J in the middle. You can find these things on the internet and if you have a printer just print it out and draw it much like you would use a stencil. Then cut it out and paste or tape it inside the three dimensional frame. This little gift might have been one of our favorite baby room furnishings. I wouldn't dare ask our aunt what this treasure cost to create but my guess is it was very inexpensive but so thoughtful.
-Chris Houston is a freelance writer living in Indiana---and a proud dad
