Here's a before shot for ya:
Before I go much further I have to admit that I used to hate this space. It is front and center in our kitchen, not to mention smack dab behind our back door. You can see the door in the picture above. Needless to say, this is a high traffic area as we use this door to go to the garage and our back yard.
To give you some perspective, here is a shot of the other side of the door:
However, over time I have come to appreciate the space for several reasons:
1. We are so blessed to just have a space in our home to do laundry. Now that we have a baby I am constantly doing laundry. I can't imagine having to load up my baby boy and laundry to go to the Laundromat every time I had to do laundry.
2. When I was in high school, we lived in a lovely home built in the1930s. The problem was that the washer and dryer were out in the garage. Actually, not in the garage, the laundry area was in a lean-to against the garage. And guess what? When it rained the space flooded. Plus, the lot was big, so the garage must have been at least 100 feet away. It was actually a very nice home, but for whatever reason the house had not been updated to include a laundry area. What I'm trying to get at is my mom used to trudge out to the garage in all sorts of conditions with her laundry basket in tow just so we could have clean socks. The woman is dedicated. With that in mind, I think I can stand having our laundry area in the kitchen just so long as it is in the house.
3. Lastly, I have a new appreciation for the location of our washer/dryer. Now that our baby boy is here I don't want to take my eyes off his chubby cheeks for one minute. Having the laundry area in the center of things allows me to wash our clothes without taking my eyes off of him.
Now then, here is an after shot for you:
By far, the biggest change to the space was also the cheapest- paint. It is amazing just how much cleaner the space looks once we covered up all the scuff marks and painted the wood white. The pictures do not do it justice. The second biggest improvement is the shelf my husband built me. It so kindly covers up the hoses and outlets that are a necessity of washers and dryers.
Here is a close up of my storage rack:
It is just a simple 3 drawer rack from container store that I jazzed up with some leftover fabric to hide the chaos inside. The labels match the ones I have in the pantry and the jar is full of dog bones for our spoiled pup.
In addition to fun pictures, I also keep this piggy bank on my laundry shelf. He serves two purposes. The first, I can quickly pour pocket change into him before our pants go through the wash. The second, he lives right by the back door, so when I know I am going somewhere that has parking meters, I can quickly grab some change without always having to cart it around in my purse. I still haven't decided if I want to spray paint him or leave him as is.
Before we moved in, I had big plans to build doors to cover the laundry area. But you know what?
Our dryer sticks out just enough so that there is no room to build doors. My next thought was to make curtains to hide the space, but I decided that they would be too visually imposing in the small space.
I hope you enjoyed my laundry tour! I still have big plans to add in some art and maybe a drying rack. There are so many fun laundry ideas floating around the web these days that the possibilities abound! Thanks for stopping by!
How do you like to make laundry day fun?
No comments:
Post a Comment