A minimalist nursery in our 1BR apartment (with photos!)

After all the talk about keeping our baby stuff to the bare minimum, and the list of baby stuff we amassed before the birth, I thought you might like an update on what that looks like in practice. Our goal was to spend as little as possible and keep the baby stuff from taking over our apartment, and I think we've done a pretty good job.

We converted my dresser into a changing table by stacking cheap blankets on top of it, rotating through them whenever one gets dirty. You can see the wet bag for cloth diapers on the right (we use a combination of cloth and disposable):

The nice thing about this set-up is that we can expand the size of the "changing pad" as Frankie grows, plus we didn't need to buy anything new. 

The top two drawers of the dresser hold my stuff, and the bottom drawer is for Frankie's clothing and cloth diapers. It turns out that baby clothing is TINY so all his outfits (and he has at least 30!) easily fit in one drawer. If we had a whole dresser for him, I honestly don't know what we would do with all the other drawers!

As for bedtime, Frankie sleeps in a little travel crib next to our bed. It's just the right size!

I set up this "nursing station" in the living room, with a stack of books to read while nursing, a charging station for my phone, water, snacks, etc. Several moms suggested doing that and I'm so glad I took their advice! The quilt was mine when I was a baby. We can easily move the quilt and nursing pillow to the bedroom when we have company coming over and want the room to look a little more grown-up.

We also have a container in the bathroom for Frankie's bath supplies and two cubbies in the closet for all his blankets, swaddle cloths, sleep sacks, etc. (I have one of these which I share with the little guy). We keep his stroller in the trunk of the car and just pull it out whenever we need it.

The one thing I would like to have if we had more space is a swing. I've heard they are lifesavers. But I substitute my own low-tech "swing" by putting Frankie in his car seat carrier and rocking it back and forth with one hand while reading a book or checking my phone with the other. That works for now, and maybe we'll get a swing for the next baby. :)

Finally, we have this little bouncer seat where I set Frankie when I'm cooking/showering/doing anything where I can't wear him. He loves it, especially with his musical beehive toy that we tied to the top. Here's the little man modeling it himself:

Andddddd that's it! That's all the baby stuff in our apartment. It's working out really well so far. We don't feel like anything is missing. It is so true that you don't need a lot of stuff for baby. We are loving the minimalist approach!

p.s. I stumbled across this article called "Getting ready for Baby: what do I really need?" and thought you might enjoy it! It definitely describes our approach!