A walk-in closet with a window can double as a creative toddler bedroom with a bit of imagination! Come see how this 5'x5' closet space was transformed! This post contains affiliate links.
What do you do when you are short on bedroom space? Convert a closet into a creative toddler bedroom! Mac has been sleeping in here for 2 years and it has been such a great use of space. We recently transformed it from a nursery into a toddler bedroom. A cute and cozy place for him that is close to mom and dad. Here's the backstory...
When we moved into our home 2 years ago we quickly realized that this 4 bedroom house was meant for a family of 4. Not 7. The bedrooms (except for the master bedroom) are TINY, really only space for one child. We've had to get creative with storage to make it work. You can see our girls' room here.
Mac is baby #5 so he's kind of the odd one out. There isn't room to put him in the girls' room or the boys' room so we had planned on using the last bedroom as an office/nursery. When I saw the house in person for the first time I fell in love with the idea of using one of our walk-in master closets (we have 2) as a nursery for him and using the last bedroom as a dedicated office. The closet had a window and a door so he would have natural light, fresh air, and we could still have our privacy. This is how his nursery closet came to be. See how we styled his closet nursery in this post.
Mac is no stranger to creative sleeping arrangements. He had a travel nursery when we lived in our RV before moving to Virginia so he's accustomed to tiny spaces.
Now that he is 2 years old and has figured out how to climb out of his crib, we needed to come up with new arrangements. Again, we toyed with the idea of moving him down the hallway and into the office so that he'd have a bit more space. That just seemed to make sense, but the more we thought about it, the more we were uneasy to do that.
He's a very curious 2 year old and keeps me busy with his antics. There was nothing to keep him in his bed at night and away from the file cabinets or the paper shredder in the closet. And if he tried to come out and find us in the middle of the night I worried that he'd fall down the stair case, which is right next to our bedroom door. Two years old just seemed too young for that kind of freedom so we decided to buy ourselves a couple more years before giving up our office space.
I turned his walk-in closet nursery into a cute and creative toddler bedroom and HE LOVES IT.
This was such a fun morning project for the two of us. He was right there helping me the entire time. We moved his baby bed out and moved a crib mattress in. I made a tiny platform for his bed out of pull out drawer and plastic toy bins.
The bins have blocks, Mr. Potato head toys, and pretend food. Accessing them is super easy, I just lift his mattress! My mom made that cute map blanket for Aaron a few years ago. It's a throw, but is the perfect size for Mac's toddler mattress.
The toys that aren't in storage totes are in his toy box from Step2. This toy box is nice and deep and holds a TON of toys. The rest of his toys are in a closet downstairs that we built.
I used two bins from this old toy organizer that we bought for our boys 12 years ago for books and they fit perfectly on top of his toy box. I got rid of the rack years ago, but these bins have come in handy for so many things.
As you can see, every inch of this 5'x5' space is being used. His shoes are hung in this organizer from IKEA and his hats are on the wall behind the door on command hooks.
The drawer under his bed holds his socks and pajamas, and his costumes, sweaters and shirts are hung on hangers. This eliminated the need for a dresser and allowed space for his toy box.
Above the hangers is a grey tote that has all of his pants and shorts. He's the 5th child, our last child, and a boy so he doesn't have a lot of clothing. Just the basics.
The rest of the shelving has puzzles and blocks. I do not worry about these things falling on top of him in the middle of the night. The shelving is anchored to the wall and is very secure. In the 2 years that we've lived here not so much as a blanket has fallen off of the shelving and onto Mac.
The other side of the room is where we had some fun with decor.
Mac LOVES vehicles so I framed this old poster that used to hang in our boys' room when they were his age. I can't believe that was 12 years ago! We lived in Kodiak, Alaska and found this poster at a local toy store there. It has everything we loved about living in that small fishing town on it, including the Coast Guard base that my husband was stationed at.
I mounted the poster to the wall and placed his favorite vehicle toys on the shelf.
I've found him playing in his room several times. Just sitting on his bed with his fire truck or looking through his toy box. It's such a cute little space for a cute little guy, and if he needs anything mom and dad are only 10' away.
Here are more organizational posts that you might enjoy!
IKEA Wall of Storage Built-Ins
Danielle says
Very curious about the details of how you raised the mattress!
Brandy says
Hi! I had some little pull out drawers from an old rubbbermaid dresser and put the mattress on top of two of them.
Debbie says
My granddaughter sleeps in a large closet in our guest room when she visits. I am looking for ideas for paint, wallpaper or stickers. She's moving into a toddler bed so I'm ready to redo her "room."
Sarah M says
Thank you for sharing was scouring the internet for ideas an came across your post. This is what we will likely do as currently in a 2br and kids need separate spaces we are lucky to have a big walk enough in . Thank you!
Brandy says
You're welcome! Our little guy used our closet for over 3 years. It was fantastic! Good luck!