The Laundry Room Saga

We've lived in this house for about a year and a half. And, at times it's been a challenge, because when we moved to this house we downsized by almost 400 square feet. Now, I won't lie, I've been very ummmmm... annoyed by this at times, and I suspect the smallness of the space will occasionally crop up to annoy me, especially when it comes to kitchen cabinet/pantry space. Now, all that being said, there are things that I really love about this house. I love "where" it is... I love the view out my kitchen window... I love the floors... and most of all, I love being at home with my babies in this house. And, I've gone from being annoyed by the challenge of small spaces to learning to work with them, and making them work for me. I've discovered how in a smaller home, organization and cleanliness are priceless. Also, there is NO room for things I don't like... if I have to look at them constantly, I will be annoyed. So, it's been very liberating to do without, as opposed to being annoyed by the ugliness, of say, chairs I hate. And, while living in a small space you discover how important it is to LOVE everything around you, if you have limited room, you must love each and every thing in each and every room, and how each and every room is put together. Got all that?! :-) And, the bottom line, I am at heart, a girl who loves to work with a budget--while it would be fun to have a limitless decorating budget at some point in my life, the search for quality items at discount prices makes me very, very, very happy. And, so, yesterday my laundry room joined the list of rooms in my house that are "complete". Here's the final product. It's a small room, so it was pretty hard to take pictures, so forgive the choppy look.

First of all... the paint. For the most part I am about as unpicky as possible when it comes to paint shades. So, that comes in handy because, did you know, that Lowes, Home Depot, basically any paint store all have OOPS! shelves?! SO COOL! So, if you keep an open mind about the colors that you want in rooms, and, always be willing to walk out with nothing, you can pick paint up for very cheap. When you find a paint color that will work for your room always be sure to check the finish, eggshell, semi-gloss, whatever, and verify that it is an interior/exterior paint, as needed, so you know it will work in your space. In my experience, Lowes is the best for OOPS! paint. I really like painting with their Valspar brand paint, and they only charge $5 for a gallon of OOPS! paint, which I consider reasonable. Home Depot is more like $14 for OOPS! paint--but since their paint is more expensive to begin with, I suppose it's still half price-ish. I'm just not a fan of Home Depot's paint--but depending on who you talk to, you'll get different opinions on this, so don't take my word for it. :-) Anyway, so, now that I've kept this long story long, I found this gray semi-gloss paint on the OOPS! shelf at Lowes for $5. I hadn't thought of gray for this space, but it ended up being perfect. There is something very clean-feeling about the gray and white combo in a laundry room.

The garage door, and the door from the laundry room to the house open up against the same wall, slightly overlapping when they are both open. So, as it seems that you always need places to hang things... for us with two avid swimmers, swimsuits to dry, in winter time, winter wear to dry, and you name it, I asked Nell to make me boards in woodshop that would go on that back wall that was basically wasted space. Painted with bright white paint, and then with hooks added, they have cut down on the clutter around here SO very much--I love it!
I had just put all the dry winterwear away before I took these pictures... most of the time the hooks are more full than this. :-) In this picture below, the wrinkly toile bag is actually for my kitchen/bathroom/dirty dog/dirty floor washcloths... I am not picky about much, but one thing I am VERY picky about is kitchen/housecleaning rags... do you know how many germs and nasty bacteria are in those?! Yuck! So not clean. So, I have a system for my rags. I NEVER use them for more than one wiping down application of whatever "thing" I am wiping down. I buy my rags in bulk at Costco, because I like them to be white and consistent quality so I can bleach the snot out of them. I sincerely dislike the thought of using old shirts or whatever as rags, because I like them to have bulk so when I grab them to scrub something, they are textured to do the job properly... yes, I know, I'm weird. Anyway, so this process keeps my house pretty well de-germified for the most part, but also means my dirty rags stack up pretty fast. Below is the bag I put them all in until I can drop them in boiling hot bleachy water. :-)

It seems like my kitchen counter is always cluttered by weird things... you know, the recycling schedule for the year, a business card that I don't want to get rid of... etc. Well, turns out they've invented this handy thing to help with stuff like that. It's called a bulletin board... who knew?! So I got me one of them. Also, I got the most darlingest calender EVER! It has a shoe for every day of the year. As I am completely bananas for shoes, it makes me very happy. And, I may have wasted a lot of time already looking at it. It makes me smile while folding laundry, and it's not often that a body can say they smile while doing laundry.

And, my apple box signs... I had some leftover plywood from another project, so I cut them out in apple box end size approximately and mixed a burgundy brown apple box color together... they're rough around the edges, and I'm pretty happy with them. They're a little shiny for my liking at this point... I need to chuck them out my front door a couple times and kick them around on the driveway and bowl them down my creekbed to rough them up a bit. Right now my driveway is covered in de-icer, my creekbed is covered in snow and it's just not condusive to the roughing up of too-shiny objects in my usual fashion. But, they did turn out pretty well.

And, these are the baskets I keep my rags in. I have somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 baskets in this house. I had no idea that I collect baskets, but apparently I do. So, it was a little challenging for me at first, because normally one does not put brown and gray together. And, there was no way I was painting my pretty brown baskets. Finally I decided to just go with the brown and the gray, and call it good. I'm actually happy with how it looks.

And, for my birthday this year, my husband got me (very badly needed) new washer and dryer set. We got them yesterday, they were majorly backordered due to the awesome price they had on them. They have been so much fun, and have already changed my life so much... much more efficient, and my laundry is much cleaner... yay! Thank you Frank!

There have been other organizing things we have done in the past couple weeks that have led up to this next part... being able to fold laundry on top of the washer and dryer! It used to be that the dryer was the catch-all for alot of the girl's clutter around here. So, I would have to put my clean laundry in laundry baskets. It could be that I am the only one here, but a laundry basket is like a giant black hole for me. I put the laundry in it, and it never comes out again. And, I'd fold laundry on our bed, after moving the baskets around for a couple days, and then I'd forget that it was on our bed until bed time, and so I'd have to put folded laundry in the baskets, and it would sit that way for a couple days... what a mess! What can I say, I am not an organizer by nature. So, I finally figured out that the way to fix this problem was to fold laundry as it came out of the dryer. So far, it is working like a charm, and I'm seriously considering getting rid of my laundry baskets.

And, this is a different room, and a subject for another day, but I'm working on eventually getting a wall of pictures put together of our going losting adventures, and things that relate to them... I had the plywood, paint, mod-podge, and this empty box sitting next to my recycling bin... the rest is history. Hopefully I shall find some OOPS! paint in an appropriate Going Losting coordinating color soon, so I can get that project all put together. :-)