Nursery plans for moving parents? Help!

Kurrant · November 2015

I couldn't find a thread on this without hijacking another persons personal question.

Anyone out there planning to move within a year or so of the birth? This apartment is full to the max. It's a two bed and its *just* enough for the two of us. We are hoping to move by the baby's first birthday but it may end up being 6 months either side of that depending on changing situations. The room we are using for the nursery has high ceilings and is covered in an ugly sort of pinkish-brown wallpaper and it has some of my crafting stuff in it and a spare comp. DH built a shelf for the closet in there to house things like printers and spare backup drives for our comps (he is majorly backup obsessed). The closet will be staying as is but the room will be cleared out for the baby.

My question is would it be a waste to bother painting the room? I know the baby wont remember this first room and we might move sooner than expected but he/she might have to stay in there for a year and a half if we can't find a place we love. The renting market around here is crap at the moment so we have no idea what it will be like in a years time and how long it could take it find a rent-able house that we like. I feel like the painting is mostly for me and for sentimental reasons. DH couldn't care less if we paint it or not. I feel torn. . . My first baby's first nursery vs paint and prep money that will be left for the next tenants when we leave that could be used for nice things for baby.

I know that no one has a yes/no right/wrong definitive answer for this. I am just looking for input and opinions to help me through this choice. It might seem like a lame and trivial dilemma but I am struggling with it regardless.

BlueJuice · November 2015

It's not lame, but you nailed the dilemma very well in your OP: the nursery is mostly for you (the parents). The baby will never remember the cute decor. I just asked my five-year-old about the decor in her nursery (which hasn't changed yet, as we simply moved her into a different bedroom and will be reusing the nursery for this newest baby), and even though it's all still there, she can't articulate anything about it except that it has a picture of a ship on the wall, and is full of boxes (both true. Ha!). So it didn't make much of an impression.

That said, decorating a nursery is fun. So you definitely have to weigh how much you would be disappointed to skip it altogether. What I might do in your position is skip painting the walls, but work around them to come up with some kind of cute theme to tie together the room or portion of a room that you use. If you are anything like my DH and I right before we moved out of our apartment, you probably already are tight on space, so I you may want to try to keep baby things to a minimum, or at least carefully consider which things you really plan to use. I've seen some adorable half-bedroom or corner-room 'nurseries' too, so you don't have to feel guilty if you decide to keep a corner of the room devoted to your crafting stuff too.

camillaandcarson · November 2015

I would skip it. I never painted my toddler's room as a baby and life was great anyway. But there was no wallpaper. It was just neutral and boring.

amscape · November 2015

We will be moving sometime between when the baby is born to 3 months ( that'll be a lot of fun, right?!) so I've decided not to do any sort of nursery in our apartment. I figure baby gear can just invade the living room until we move & we'll use a pack & play w/bassinet until we move. Once we move I'm excited to set up some sort of nursery although we'll see if that happens since I'll be freshly back to work around the same time!

kbrands7 · November 2015

I think it depends on how influenced you are by your surroundings. If you're going to be spending a lot of time in there and you really dislike how it looks now, put up some new paint. If you really don't care either way, then leave it alone for now.

dshannah · November 2015

I'm moving in June. Which is going to suck. And what makes it worse is we don't know where. Could be local, could be across the country. We won't know until Thanksgiving at the earliest, April at the latest. So I've got no suggestions, just company for the misery:)

Jesse835235 · November 2015

This might be a long shot, but maybe you could ask the the apartment management company if they would consider reimbursing you if you painted it a neutral color. They will probably want to take down the wallpaper anyway, and this way they're getting free labor. Like I said, it's a long shot, but worth a try. I rented a couple different houses in college and got reimbursed on a few occasions for painting rooms.

ashlitas · November 2015

Like a few others that have posted, we will be moving within a few months of the birth. And the move will be cross-country, so we are looking at only buying the necessities for the birth, then doing a nursery once we settle into the new place. Baby will likely sleep in our room in a pack n play-type setup in the meantime.

mrstmoose · November 2015

We have decided that we are buying a home by next November. We are lucky in the sense that our apartment walls are not stark white and more of a light tan-ish color. I think at this point I just plan on hanging things on the wall and letting the paint color go. I'd rather paint the room what I want in our own home. I feel your pain at the apartment being at it's max, we have the two of us and two dogs that are 35 pounds and 50 pounds...it's going to be a tight squeeze for 5 or 6 months!

seasalt123 · November 2015

We'll be moving either shortly before the baby arrives or some time thereafter. It's very tricky figuring out what to buy and what to plan for when you don't know the space you're working with. We're currently in a one bedroom so that will NOT work for very long. Good luck!

Kurrant · November 2015

Thanks for all the input. It's reassuring to know I'm not the only one who has run into this dilemma and had a difficult time with it. As some suggested, the first thing we thought about was asking the landlord about painting and getting reimbursed since we will likely be here for a year and we are really good tenants but the owner (the building actually has changed hands in the last year) is ALL about putting as little as possible into this place. The grounds aren't kept anymore and all work on the place is done very second rate. Our apartment went from a quiet, peaceful, well kept area to . . . well . . . junk. We have noisy college kids below us who smoke ( all the smoke comes into our windows) and reckless jackasses who stay up playing music and cheering/shouting till 2 am WITH a toddler.

Sorry. Ok now that I have vented about that . . . Back on topic. . . we decided to just not paint as PP suggested and try and get out of this place as sooner than we initially planned for.

NMason505 · November 2015

We have a small three bedroom house and 2 old (2.5y and 1y) children, so our house is full. I really don't want my older two to share a room with the concern of napping issues. Before we found out we are pregnant we'd planned to move to a bigger house. We are looking at moving between next spring/summer/fall. My older two were in our room till they were 4-6 months, sleeping in a rnp or a pnp, so that's the plan with this baby too. We'll likely be in our new house when the baby would be moving into its own room. It's not ideal, but that's our only option.

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