For the Love of Laundry {or the lack thereof}

Monday, January 16, 2012

For the Love of Laundry {or the lack thereof}

I’m choosing a spot in my home each week of 2012 to purge. I’m calling it the “52 Week Purge”. {ahem}

I am doing this purge to determine if each space still works, if everything is still needed in it, and to do a thorough cleaning. This week was supposed to be my bedroom drawers, but they didn’t need as much attention as my laundry room did.

I was feeling like I had enough of the laundry room, and my husband had a few free hours. I jumped on the chance to fix this room.

The before:

{please note-when I feel like a room is ugly-I avoid it. Not good for a room I should spend a LOT of time in…}

We attempted to recycle some cabinets for better laundry room storage, but it only made my very narrow laundry area feel dark and closed in. It also gave lots of space to “store” things, like items for homemade laundry soap, and unfinished soap I am never going to use.

I’ve seen much worse, especially since it has been over a year that I purged this space-but I was over it- in a major way.

These hampers are good for all of the sorting I need done, but the tops didn’t hold much weight wise, and turned into a junk magnet.

Are you ready for the after??

The after:

I used the same shelving that I just used for my new office space, this time I used white shelving, and kept the chrome tracks and supports.

I bought the inexpensive seagrass baskets at Walmart {mine is a two-pack}, and the green baskets at Lowes. {I also had a return at Lowes which knocked the project down to super- duper-cheap {aka-Finding Frugal}. Everything else in the room is simply repurposed.

A small dash of pretty to our home network panel.

{printable@ cheepideas.com}

I used the baskets to hold dusting cloths and my Oreck bags. Having a container gives me a limit for how much of an item I can keep.

Our “sock monster” container. Every other week or so I go through and match up all of the spare socks that come out of the laundry.

A tiny basket holds rescued marbles and Legos from the dryer, also home to my little stain bottle.

;)

I lied, I also bought this shoe organizer, to put things that used to get lost in those cabinets out where they can be seen.

Pretty good idea, in my opinion.

Behind the door is a sturdy shelf {which has been there-just didn’t take a before pic} which holds our paper products. My husband also moved a broom caddy from one location that was going unused to here. {I use a Swiffer in the bathrooms-using a broom in there creeps me out.}

The little green baskets hold a few tools and some other less-used items, some canning jars hold our art paintbrushes. A tin laundry soap container is now a home for my yankee and scentsy tarts. There is also my little tool box on the dryer shelf and little black baskets the kids use at clean-up time. I also took my Tide out of the huge box and put it in an old blue container.

To keep the room looking tidy, I took off those top racks on the laundry sorters. I am still trying to decide if I want to convert to all white hangers {for eye appeal} or leave my color coded system {which helps me deliver laundry to the right child, with white as my back-up color}.