nursery furniture
Some guidance on non-crib nursery furniture:
Cozy seat (glider, regular chair, daybed): You want a cozy place to sit and/or recline when you are up in the middle of the night feeding a baby. That something could be a rocking chair, a glider, a daybed, or any other cozy chair in your house. A glider is basically a specialized comfy chair made for new parents, sort of a stylized Lay-Z-Boy recliner. Gliders tend to be huge but very comfortable -- lots of parents swear by them. We opted for a daybed (this one from Layla Grayce), which is big enough for the whole family to cuddle during story time, and and has the added bonus of being a real place to lay down if for any reason one of us wants to sleep in the nursery (monitoring a sick baby, etc.). Another idea is a giant and comfy regular chair, like the Sixpenny Neva.
Laundry hamper: all babies produce massive amounts of dirty laundry, so you need a hamper somewhere in there.
Books/toy storage: before your know it, your infant is a mobile baby who can reach for toys independently. For this reason we try to do as much storage as possible that is visible and accessible at ground level so that toys and books are reachable without needing an adult. Keeping with the theme of visibility and accessibility, we love open shelving even for higher-up storage (we have the West Elm Parsons Tower), and have used bins and other storage boxes to keep things tidy-looking while still relatively open.
