Those precious months after bub arrives are a beautiful and crazy foggy haze of sleepless nights, feeds and nappy changes. The last thing you need when sleep deprived is to be fumbling around in the dark searching for a clean set of pjs after a 3am poocident!
Clearly labelling the essentials in your new baby room will help you be prepared and minimise unnecessary stress and fuss. Plus, they look gorgeous!
Why I created labels for baby’s room
The idea to make my wooden nursery labels came not long after my little person was born and friends commented on the hand drawn labels I’d created to organise our nursery.
I didn’t want to have to go looking for items when I needed them but to find things easily.
I also didn’t want the burden of being the only one to know where things were. I wanted my husband to know where everything belonged and not have to try and remember systems created and stored only in my head. I didn’t want him to have to constantly ask me where to find what he needed.
I also wanted Little Miss to be empowered to find and put away her own things as she grew old enough to do so.
So I created tags for the baskets we used to store Little Miss’ clothes. Each basket was labelled so both her parents (and her grandmother when babysitting) could instantly access items with ease, and her too as she grew old enough to dress herself and help put away her things.
The paper tags with my hand written text and badly drawn pictures were great for a while but didn’t withstand the test of time. One by one they got pulled off or tore, and disappeared from the baskets until only one was left.
When friends exclaimed over how organised Little Miss’ cupboard was and said I should make tags and sell them, I knew I would need a more sturdy material. Apart from needing a much more professionally finished product, I wanted to create labels that were both practical and beautiful.
Practical design with pictures and words
Before deciding to take the plunge and create a new product I did some research to find out what was already out there in the market. Vinyl sticker labels were pretty popular but there didn’t seem to be much available for non-plastic storage containers.
There also weren’t any top quality picture labels with both images and text. There were people selling text-only labels and some printables with images in bright colours were available, but no labels that I liked the look of and would want to use in our home myself.
Now there are a number of other people selling very similar products to mine (one or two of whom literally copied and pasted my work word for word, although I still think my labels are much better quality!) but at the time there wasn’t anything like it available. Not that I could find anyway.
That’s why I chose the minimalist Scandi style wooden labels with ribbons to tie onto baskets or boxes, and engaged a professional graphic designer.
Wooden lasercut labels
I love the aesthetic of simple clean-lined Scandi style using natural materials, so decided that wooden labels would be best. Originally the picture I had in my head was for white illustrations and text printed onto wood, but lasercutting soon emerged as a more practical way of actually getting the designs out of my head and into my hands. And so my wooden storage labels were brought to life!
Unisex labels for a gender neutral nursery
The other reason I was attracted to a Scandi-style design for these labels, is the modern uncluttered absence of stereotype. So many baby products are limited to blue and pink but I wanted a modern neutral palette that could be used for boys or girls and was aesthetically pleasing to my own eye.
A lighter shade of timber paired with black or white coloured ribbon cord suits baby rooms for boys or girls and any style of nursery décor.
Gender-neutral design also means the labels can be used for younger siblings regardless of gender.
More language and custom options
I’m aware that the names we have for some infant items here in Australia are quite different to what they’re called elsewhere. I’d like to offer a version of the nursery set with terms more commonly used in north America and other places, for overseas customers (such as ‘diapers’ instead of ‘nappies’, and ‘sweaters’ or ‘knitwear’ instead of ‘jumpers’).
It may be that an option to customise the text on the labels so you can order labels with the specific terms you use, is possible in future too.
I’m also considering expanding the nursery set to include a few other items like soft toys, books, dummies/pacifiers, bottles, etc. I didn’t include those in the original nursery set but might offer them as optional add-ons in future too.
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What options would you like available in your nursery set? Leave a comment below and let me know!
Label sets for organising children’s rooms
For various reasons I ended up creating the toy storage labels first, and then the nursery set. And soon I’m excited to be launching a set of kids clothing labels too.
You can see more about all the available wooden label sets here or order yours from my etsy shop.
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