If I could have one super power, I would just say the word
and all the dirty clothes and dirty towels and dirty bed sheets would be
cleaned and folded and put away in an instant. There is nothing you can do to make folding laundry
any easier, because no matter what you do, those clothes are going to get all
tossed around and mixed up in the dryer. Waiting for the
washer and the dryer to do their thing leaves plenty of opportunity to lose
your groove by getting distracted by something else, and before you know it, it
is Thursday and you have been air-fluffing the clothes in the dryer since
Monday. And there is still a load in the washer that is starting to smell bad. The
line-up of laundry is never ending and the piles grow so fast. There are only
two of us right now and soon there will be three – something must be done to
streamline the process, because laundry is a chore that is here to stay.
Part One: Love Your Laundry Room
Fact: When we moved into our house our laundry room was
ugly. Everything in there was painted the same color. Its redeeming qualities
are that it is inside the house (so many laundry rooms in older homes are in
the garage) and it is a decent sized room. Our laundry room is downstairs and
the bedrooms are upstairs, and for me, that is an added obstacle to staying on
top of things. For my attitude towards this never-ceasing chore to change, I
need the laundry room to be a pleasant destination. It is right off of our
beautiful kitchen and so it has to both coordinate and stand out at the same
time.
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| Blech! |
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| I have said it before and I will say it over and over again: Who paints a color like this all over everything in the house?!?! |
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| You can't even tell how dingy looking that door is by this picture. |
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| We hide a lot of things behind the door in here. |
Enter, my Mama: She visited us at the end of March. Yay! She
gets all the credit for our wonderfully painted kitchen and so when she offered
to paint another room in the house, I leapt at the idea of doing the laundry
room. And unlike the green paint color debacle I experienced with the kitchen,
I had settled on a serene shade of blue for the laundry room months ago.
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| Isn't it gorgeous? |
I am thrilled with the way the color looks on the walls! It
is soothing and just lovely. It transformed the color of the cabinets from
hideous to acceptable and it goes great with the black and white appliances. I
have to say, though, that I think the biggest impact came from painting all the
trim white. The door in front of the water heater looks 100 times better and,
to me, totally cleaned up the look of the room.
Finishing Touches:
Accent rug – Initially I was hoping to find a black and
white rug in a geometric print for this room, but when Mama and I were walking
through Target, I saw this one and when I unfolded it I was surprised that I
liked it! I am not usually into floral patterns, but I feel like it is more of
a picture than a pattern, since the print is so large. Mama and I both agreed
the colors were perfect – the blue of the laundry room, the green of the
kitchen, and yellow for the pantry – they are all there! It adds a ton of life to
the room and will keep my feet warm in the winter when the floor is cold as
ice. Plus, it is machine washable. Score!
Laundry sorter – We have a problem called, “our laundry
piles up in these huge hampers in our room until the mountain starts falling
over and then we do laundry but it takes forever because the load was so huge.”
Here is what I hope will be our solution: We will keep a small hamper in our
room and every morning/every other morning we will bring it downstairs and sort
it into our brand new laundry sorter. This will force us to do laundry more
often, because even though each side theoretically holds two full loads, it
will appear to be full faster. Also, having to look at the laundry on a nearly
daily basis when I sort it will give me more awareness of when the clothes need
to go into the washer.
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| A big thank you to my husband for helping me put this together. I have learned that I don't really do that well with picture instructions and I really was struggling with this one. The written instructions weren't fabulous either, though. |
Drying rack – This is pretty simple. The drying rack we were
using was just too large for this space and I do not want to have clothes
hanging to dry in any other room but this one. I think this new drying rack
will hold just as many clothes even though it takes up less space. I also like
the mesh topper that can be used to dry sweaters.
Cleaning supplies – We replaced the dry erase board with a
set of hooks to hold floor cleaning implements. This is pretty much where we
were keeping them before, except now they won’t fall over or take up floor
space. I like how much more orderly it looks, and the way the white hooks pop
against the blue wall.
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| Thank you, Drew! |
Now, indulge me for a moment while I tell you about this broom. This broom has achieved a level of broominess to which all other brooms
should aspire. It. Is. Awesome. Broom, how do I love thee? Let me count the
ways: You are height adjustable. Your soft bristles gather all kinds of dust
and crumbs while gliding over my tile floors as smoothly as Kristi Yamaguchi on a freshly resurfaced ice rink.
You are wider than my previous broom, which means I accomplish more in less
time. You have a removable whisk for sweeping debris into the dustpan. And oh,
the dustpan! EVERYTHING goes into the dustpan without my having to do that thing where
you keep backing up to get that last line of dust swept up. And the dustpan has
teeth on the back to make sure everything is removed from the broom. This is
the start of a great broomance.
Seriously, though, this is what I said the first time I used
this broomtastic creation:
“Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, no way! Drew! Come look at the line
of dust left by this broom and dustpan. Oh, wait. You CAN’T, because THERE
ISN’T ONE! WOOHOO! This is the best. Broom. EVER!”
A beautiful laundry room and an epic broom. It takes so little to make me so happy. :)
