Oliver's montessori room all Ikea — and how to do it

When I was pregnant, while waiting for our little Oliver, we read a lot about the Montessori method and philosophy, and how to integrate it at home, in our everyday life. We loved the idea that Oliver would grow independent since his very first months and we decided to follow our instincts and go for it. It wasn’t an easy choice not to have a classic crib—leaving the known for the unknown—and we knew we would have risen some eyebrows. But going against the flow wasn’t anything we hadn’t already experienced with our paleo diet. We could definitely handle it ;)

When we started thinking about his room, two things were very clear to us:

• Some of the rooms we saw on the internet were minimalistic to a point they weren’t even pretty. We love design and we knew we wanted the room to be beautiful—to our standards at least—as well as montessori.
• “Montessori” furniture is very expensive! Woodly, for instance, has gorgeous items but they are really not affordable!

So we decide to do what every smart ;) person would do: take a trip to Ikea! This is the result and we are very happy with it. It’ll have to change and evolve with Oliver, but for now it is good enough.

The sleepy area

The montessori bed

Truth be told, the idea of having a mattress on the floor wasn’t appealing to me. I love the reason why you’d want to have your child’s bed on the floor, but I wanted to find a cleaner, more hygienic solution.

The Sniglar bed frame seemed perfect: light colours, Scandinavian style and minimalistic. Just the way we like it! We bought the frame, sawed the legs off (here how to do it), added the mattress and—done! A great montessori-inspired bed!

Read what happened when we moved Oliver to his room and how his montessori bed has evolved since.

The jungle stickers

I fell in love with these stickers the minute I saw them (this is the only non-Ikea item). How could our little monkey not have his very own jungle? I’m so happy we got them because every morning, when Oliver wakes up, he speaks to his friend Raffe the Giraffe.

The play area

The montessori mobiles

I make myself all the montessori mobiles and then hang them with a nylon/cotton thread attached to the ceiling with a hook.

The shelves

We would have liked to buy the long Kallas Shelving unit, but because the room isn’t very big, we had to opt for the square one. The frames are also Ikea and then I patiently selected images online—I decided for the insects series as I think the nature theme is calm enough—and printed them in a big format, to help concentration.

As it wasn’t easy to find them and buying them is quite expensive, I created a pdf for you that you can simple download and print. :-) Here it is!

… and everything else!

• Leka play mat. A simple thick blanket would work too.
• Minde mirror. A mirror is very important in a montessori room.
• Ekorre toddle truck, because Alex said “Oliver’s room needed it”. Sweet!
• Tåstrup carpet. A carpet is important if you have a marble floor. When Oliver will start crawling we might want to find a warmer solution also for the other half of the room.
• Poäng armchair. I got used to sit on his bed when he wakes up at night to feed, but this armchair would have been sooo comfy!
• Toys. We like wooden and fabric toys, but Oliver likes pretty much anything he can chew. The roll—nice to learn and practice crawling later on—is a common plastic inflatable one that I covered with a pillow case and closed in a candy shape.

The gate

We live with a hairy beast—our gorgeous, curious long-haired golden retriever Colbie— so we have to have a gate. Before installing the gate, Colbie woke up Oliver more than once by sitting next to his bed and wagging her tail. The Patrol safety gate with extension is the only long enough one we found (as we wanted to put in the corridor, not at the door) and that folds to take as little space as possible.

I participate with this post on the #changebeginsinyourfamily Link Up hosted by Montessori en Casa.

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