Laundry Room!

One of the few projects we were set on completing before the babies came was our laundry room. I love our house, but I had always HATED the laundry room. It is in the worst location (in between the garage and the kitchen). It is cramped. It allowed zero room for "dumping" the every day items before walking into the kitchen. These factors then translated to everything flooding into the kitchen resulting in constant clutter. Let me show you our "laundry room" before:

The shelf above the washer/dryer was nice, but it was very hard to keep organized (and was so visible!). We knew we wanted a new washer/dryer -- especially with all the laundry we will be doing very, very soon. We had bought our used ones from an old retirement home when we got married for $300 combined. They were very used. I was also positive we needed front-loaders. Since there was no counter top, we would place things on top of the washer, then when it came time for laundry I would move the clutter either onto the counter in the kitchen, on the floor in the kitchen, etc. And then when it came time to clean up, the clutter ended right back on top of the washer, and the cycle continued. 

After racking our brains on the best arrangement of our new washer/dryer, cabinets, shelving, and hangers, we finally came up with an arrangement that has made life a lot easier (and cleaner).

We decided to stack the washer/dryer and add a cabinet and counter top that would be the perfect "dumping place" for the purse/mail/keys when we came in from the garage. 

We used the original shelf and just cut it in half and added brackets. These shelves are the one area where things didn't work out as planned - I wanted a small rod on the bottom shelf to hang clothes that shouldn't be dried. However, after we finished the shelves and almost placed the rod, it was too shallow for hangers. DANG! If I knew this wasn't going to work, we probably would have hung the shelves a little lower, but such is life. We ended up removing the door from the closet and hung the rod there - this is basically where I'm standing in the picture. This is also where we can now take off shoes and store laundry baskets during laundry time (as opposed to the kitchen).

The baskets and mail organizer are from Home Goods (and the baskets are actually empty)! The cabinet ended up storing everything! I'm sure I'll find stuff to put in there before too long. :) The magnetic chalkboard is an old magnetic board I had from Freshman year of college that I bought at Ikea. I just spray-painted it with chalkboard paint so that you can write on it as well as hang up invitations, coupons, etc.

The cabinet and drawers have been soooo nice. All the cleaning supplies and odds and ends can be placed in this cabinet rather than in plain sight above the washer/dryer. I painted the cabinet (that is just from Home Depot) one of my favorite paint colors - Benjamin Moore's Palladian Blue. The counter top was the left over butcher block from our DIY island project.

So there ya go. My main "nesting" project is completed, and I am oh-so-happy about it. Besides the new washer/dryer, I think we ended up spending maybe $200 total since we used a lot of supplies on hand (i.e.: the counter top, shelf, magnetic board, etc). It feels good to get such a big project out of the way before these two crazy babies turn our world upside down!