the nursery

I have a problem and I need your help...

It seems only natural that we should pack up all the baby things.  We decided that we want to keep all the baby things we have because everything we received is perfect and wonderful and we will have children some day.   Until now I've not had the motivation to pack it up.  But today I had decided that I would clean out our closets (Ben and I have separate closets which are actually very spacious and deep), and I would pray that I'd be able to store most of it in the back depths behind our hanging clothes.

Today I spent the day upstairs in our converted attic bedroom gutting my closet of clothing, shoes, linens, old purses and doo dads, organizing everything all over our bed and some on the floor, simultaneously watching Sleeping with the Enemy and other random things from our VHS collection.  Once I had purged my possessions of stuff I didn't want anymore and somewhat put some order to the chaos, Ben came home from work.

I came downstairs to discuss with him what to do next and was hit with a wave of emotion.

 You see, I had already contemplated the thought of going through all the baby things and packing it all away and I'd already imagined what it would feel like and how I would feel doing that.  I was already expecting that I might shed a tear or two, or maybe have a few big breakdowns if I slowed my packing down enough to think about the objects I was putting away... if I took the time to think about the little socks, smell the baby shampoo, read a bit of the story books... yes, if I took the time to do those things I'd certainly need to cry it out.  I can't avoid doing things because it might make me cry.  Leaving all the baby things out for Ben and I to view every time we pass through the nursery area to use our upstairs bathroom, to bump into in the middle of the night when you can barely see your way from one side of the room to the other, to stare at months from now...no, we don't have a nursery you can shut the door to.  We don't have a separate room for a nursery... what we had was a corner of Ben's office area, which is actually in the open space of our converted attic bedroom, which you have to walk through to get to our bathroom.  No, it would not be right to have the cloth diapers, unopened bath toys and pacifiers, sweet little stuffed animals and all the adorable swaddling blankets gather dust as they watch us day in and day out pass them by.

No, it's right to pack it all away in our circumstance.  If only we had a separate room then I would just shut the door and leave it all the way it is... to wait patiently until the next baby. 

  But one little thing about this scenario which I had not imagined was what we would do next.  After all the baby things are put away, we will have an empty space.  It's a small and awkward empty space, mind you, but it will be empty nonetheless.   It's a converted attic so the walls slant in to the center of the room, so we can't hang any thing from the walls or use any furniture that's any taller than a crib or a desk. 

So here's where I need your help.  I have no idea what I should do with this space.

I don't want to just leave it empty for too long... I mean, I can only imagine that a sad, empty space (in my metaphor-loving mind) will only serve to remind me of my empty womb, my empty nest.  Sigh.

Should I just organize the space and then cover everything with sheets or something so we don't have to look at it?  That's kinda depressing, though.

We don't have any exercise equipment and we're joining a gym soon anyways so we can't really use this as a fitness area or anything.

I already have a studio downstairs all to myself for all my crafting and sewing pleasures (and some crafting and sewing frustrations too).

Ben's records and stuff have to stay downstairs because in the summer sometimes the heat is so bad that this upstairs space gets hot enough to make you sweat while you're sitting.

And, we don't really have any non-baby furniture that we don't know what to do with.

We've racked our brains trying to come up with ideas.

Not sure what to do.