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When Mac was too old for a co-sleeper bassinet (read about where she slept as a newborn here), she moved into a Montessori floor bed. I already explained what a floor bed is and why we chose it (read about that here), but today I wanted to talk about where we set up the floor bed to start with.

Once Mac grew out of the bassinet, I already knew I wanted to have her in the floor bed. The problem was our two bedroom townhouse had our bedroom and another “bedroom” masquerading as a storage unit. I also wasn’t ready to have Mac move so far away from me. So I started to search the internet, looking for inspiration to share a room with Mac and her Montessori floor bed. But I couldn’t find anyone who had a floor bed in their own bedroom. Well, we went on to successfully share a room with Mac’s bed for six months, so I thought I would talk about how we did it.

Update: If you’d like to see her floor bed after she moved into her own room, you can read about it here. Make sure you also check out why she bed shares with us part time.

There were two main things we had to take under consideration when we set up Mac’s Montessori floor bed: safety and independence.

Safely Sharing a Room with a Montessori Floor Bed

Safety is obviously a huge concern when it comes to babies. So the first order of business was to figure out how to differentiate Mac’s space from our own. I came across the North States Superyard 3-in-1 Metal Gate and ordered it right away. It is large and heavy, but we were able to attach it to the wall.

Here you can see we picked a corner of our room to put her bed in and then arranged the gate around it. We attached it to the wall so it was secure. Our floor is carpeted, but at the beginning I was still concerned with her falling out of bed. I folded up a blanket and lined around the edge of the bed with it. I figured it would soften any fall she might have.

There weren’t many other safety precautions we had to take. We lucked out and her corner didn’t have any air vents or other things that we might not want there. There was an electrical socket that we put covers in. After a few months, we had to move some things on the dresser over because she very quickly learned to stand on her bed to reach anything up there. There was a corner of a window in her area and we tried to put a cover on the corner of the ledge, but it lasted about 10 minutes and then she pulled it off. Oh well.

Independence

The other consideration with Mac’s space is independence. A Montessori floor bed promotes independence. The child can decide when they are ready to get up or ready to sleep. I already knew that Mac wasn’t going to spend a lot of time in her sleeping area as the living room was set up for her to play in. So I only needed a small amount of toys available to her. I selected four toys which you can see in the adorable picture above: A “my first doll” made for babies, a wooden teether shaped like a fish, and two board books. They were all toys I could trust her with and that she would find interesting. When she would wake up from her nap, she would go through her toys until I came upstairs to get her.

Overall, it worked well to have her in our room still. My mind was at ease because she was still close to me. But she was also given some independence to move around her own area. I feel like it was a win-win until we moved her into her own room right before her first birthday.

So now I’d like to know, have you shared a room with your child? How did you set up their area?

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. That means if you buy through my link, I may receive compensation at no extra cost to you. For more information, see my disclosure page here.