How I Made Zero Holes Hanging a Nursery Mobile from the Ceiling of Our Rental Apartment

published Apr 30, 2022
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Stylish Scandinavian newborn baby nursery with natural wooden baby cot and handmade mobile hanging over it
Credit: Getty Images/Oscar Wong

You can probably imagine that, when you’re an Apartment Therapy editor and expecting a baby, you spend *a lot* of your time thinking about nesting.

When I was pregnant with my son last year, my husband and I didn’t finalize our name picks until two days before I went into labor, but I did create a virtual mood board of my dream nursery months before that that I returned to and tweaked every few days. (On a related note: Nursery design proves very calming when everything else about having a baby — and having a baby in a pandemic — is not!) 

Even as I continued to rethink my design plan by adding a new piece of art, swapping out my rug choice, and then swapping out my rug choice again (I still haven’t found one I like), I knew I wanted an animal mobile in the nursery. Additionally, I knew that I wanted to hang it a bit to the side of the crib so it couldn’t fall on the baby, and that it had to be made of soft material — you know, in case it did fall several feet sideways onto the baby. 

I designed the perfect custom felt monkey mobile on Etsy, and realized sometime between ordering it and receiving it that I also needed something to hang it from. We live in a rental with high ceilings, and we don’t plan to stay in our apartment much longer, so I imagined that the best solution would be using something temporary, rather than carving yet another hole that we’d need to fill in a few months. I love a Command hook, but alas, I searched high and low, and I couldn’t find one made for the ceiling that could handle more than half a pound. 

That’s when I came upon these adhesive hooks on Amazon that are advertised as being suitable for up to 22 pounds. My guess is that their stickiness and reliability varies based on what type of material you hang them from, but for me and our monkey mobile, they’ve done the trick for the past couple of months. I’ll likely use another for the mobile in our next home.

Now I just need to finally commit to a rug.