Church Nursery - Part 1 of 4: The Before

I love this church - and the nursery is where my kids began any "formal" education.  It was the first place I every dropped off my kids and left them in the hands of a stranger.

But, the place needed some updating. A few years ago, the nursery did a massive makeover: painted the walls, got a new technology system, etc. What they needed now was a reorganization.

This 8 room nursery took the nursery director and I nearly 5, 5 hour days to complete (after the shopping and prep work.)  This first part of the blog shows you what I started with.

In a working church nursery, cubbies aren't being "owned" by a specific child, and therefore don't need to be open to use by the children.  Diaper bags can be placed on the hooks below for storage.  The cubbies are needed for neatly storing toys, teacher items, and cleaning supplies.

Many of the toys found in this closet (there is one closet for every other room in this nursery) were not known to even be there.  We actually made the plan to remove the toys from the closet so that they could be accessed by the children.

This room had large toys on the top of the cubbies, but the "accessories" were no where to be found.

Without a proper place to store toys, things were placed on top of changing tables for storage.

Cleaning supplies were left in cubbies - safely out the way of children, but using valuable space.

Some rooms had lots of toys... other's had a few.

Cabinets and storage in general was already plentiful.  It was just illorganized and underutilized.

Baby Cages... no, not really really cages, but cribs were being used for large toy storage.

One room, used as a secondary room for babies, was being used more as a storage facility.  As toys came in (donations, purchases, etc.), they were placed here with really no place to go.  They needed to be cleaned properly, and placed in the age appropriate room.

Tune in next time... for part 2: The Prep