I recently started pinning inspiration for the baby’s nursery. I found myself turned off by a lot of what I saw. Any other woman would use adjectives like unbearably cute or ovary-twinging or charming & chic. Not me though. I’m not digging baby themes. While images of pinks, sky blues, mint greens, and pretty pastels ransacked my Pinterest feed, I was simultaneously flipping through a West Elm catalog ready to write the company about starting a nursery-specific line.
That got me thinking…
Why do we decorate nurseries in cute baby themes? For us? For the baby? What can babies do with cute decor? Do they ponder or muse over hanging art, stuffed animals, polka dots? They’re asleep majority of the day, and when they are awake, they’re gobbling up breasts or burping up formula. Why aren’t we decorating mama’s decollatage with pink elephants or fluffy lambs then? Newborn babies are far from the age of art appreciation or critiquing interior design. They won’t notice or comprehend the felt moose head above the crib…they won’t appreciate their surroundings till later on in life. Why should we make such a fuss over it now? Do we even really need a nursery? Throw a bassinet in the bedroom, and a changing table in the office, and isn’t that all we really need? Isn’t that what our parents did, and their parents before them?
Let’s say for sanity’s sake, we decide to have a baby’s room…we would style it similarly to the rest of the house. It’s not a special room. No cute clouds, or giraffes, or ponies. Definitely no pastels. Perhaps keep a desk in the corner so that it can also function as an office. If Jordan and I have to be in this room most of the time, watching the baby, looking at the walls, pacing around, then I’d like to ensure that it’s the most comfortable, functional, and designed to suit us.
function > fussiness
