Nursery ideas: How to style cheap shelving and make it look awesome

I recently made a great kids’ storage setup using an Ikea Kallax shelf and some sturdy, stylish 3 Sprouts storage boxes. I love the way it looks, and it holds tons of toys and books out of sight. We keep a bunch of books in the bottom twoÂ containers, and even a 3-year-old can slide them out and pick out which books he wants – but they are out of sight, a nice change from my formerly messy bookshelf situation.

The 3 Sprouts boxes are the exact right size to fit in the Kallax slots – 13 x 13 inches. The Kallax shelves are really flexible for your decor, as come in a bunch of different sizes, colors, and configurations, and can be set up horizontally or vertically, freestanding on the floor or mounted on the wall.

I chose a 2 x 2Â Kallax unit that only set me back $34.99 (although oddly, some of the colors cost $49.99.) The 4 x 4 unit pictured in birch above is $149.99 and stands about 5 feet tall. You could place bins on top as well.

The storage cubesÂ I got were $16.99 on Amazon – they have sheep and peacock on Amazon, plus some combos for sale, like peacock and rhino (love that rhino! so cute!) and gorilla, kangaroo, and rabbit. You can find a whole bunch more animals on the 3 Sprouts website.

Whitney and I recently attended the ABC Kids Show, where we saw a bunch of cool new products we loved. While we were there, I noticed that Skip Hop has bins of roughly the same size and shape as the 3 Sprout bins, but with different designs – like monkey, ladybug, and owl.

The Skip Hop bins are 12.8 x 12.8 inches, which should also work great, but they are a little more expensive. Most of the Skip Hop bins have red accents – I think they would look great with the red Kallax units. I believe Skip Hop is coming out with other designs in the Spring of 2016.

I love this idea because I know that once we outgrow the designs on the storage bins, we can continue to use the shelving unit on its own or with other bins.

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Karen

Among many other things, I am a toddler mom, a former pastry chef, a San Francisco native, an extensive world traveler, a writer, and an often overwhelmed remodeler. I have recently returned to school to become a certified nurse midwife. I blog at OffTheMeathook.com (lifestyles of the carnivorous and fabulous).