Could you fit three cribs in your nursery? Planning a nursery for multiples when you’re on a budget takes considerable creativity and planning. In this guest post, mother of two-year-old triplets Jennifer shows us how her family made it work:
Once we decided to have a baby I started looking at crib bedding and dreaming about the nursery. We had the room and just needed the baby (or in our case, babies!).During the two years it took us to get and stay pregnant I spent hours looking at crib bedding. Once we found out I was pregnant with triplets, all my ideas of crib bedding and the nursery changed.
By the time we found out the genders (two boys and a girl) I was too huge, too tired, too stressed and on bed rest to do much. Money was tight since we were now down to one income and would get tighter once the triplets arrived. The kids were going to have to share a room and probably share it for a while, so we needed something that was gender neutral.
I wanted something that would last for a while and that did not look too babyish (so anything with characters was out). All the bedding sets that I liked were expensive and seemed like a waste of money for what you got. I picked a bedding set that sold extra fabric. It came in blue and pink. From that bedding set I ended up buying the valance in blue and then two yards to the blue and one yard of the pink. With this fabric I covered a lampshade that we already had, made three photo boards (one in the pink and two in the blue) and a pillow in the pink to sit on the rocker (which we already had and was mine when I was a baby).
As for the actual bedding, which my mom bought when she came down for the birth, we got bumpers and matching crib skirts at Babies R Us (light blue, light pink and light green). A good friend got each baby a special blanket with their names on them (light pink, light blue and light green). I was given tons of crib sheets at my baby shower.
For wall decor I got Wall Candy because they were removable and easy for me to do. Since I was big and on bed rest, I couldn’t do much, but I could slap some dots on the wall (and then sit in the middle of the room and tell my husband where to move them/put them).
On one wall we hung the photo boards I made. On the other wall we hung their names that we painted in brown and hung from stripes of leftover fabric.
We picked a neutral color that was in both fabrics, took the fabric to Lowes and had them match the color (a soft yellowish color). The curtains were found on sale at Target along with the curtain rod and green rug (bought from gift cards that we had received). I tried not to be too picky with many things.
We found Evenflo Jinny Lind style cribs at Big Lots for $80 each (thanks to my mom who purchased them for us!). And because they were cheap and at Big Lots I had to settle with 2 oak cribs and 1 white. The crib mattresses were bought for us off our registry by friends and family. The dresser was our baby gift from my in-laws.
Everything just ended up flowing together nicely. I wish I would have kept tabs on how much we actually spent, but I know it was not too much. With help from family and friends we were able to put together a nice, gender-neutral nursery on a great budget. It was not what I had always pictured our nursery to look like, but it turned out great and was better than I could have imagined!
This post is part of BC’s Nursery on a Budget Series. See more posts in the series.
