A LAUNDRY REVOLUTION

I just couldn't bring myself to take a "before" picture of my laundry room. It was just downright embarassing. Somehow, it had turned into a storage room. I decided that for my last project of the summer, I was going to make my laundry room more functional. When we bought this house, the laundry room was on the main living level, but it also served as our mud room. Living in MD with the constantly changing weather conditions - it was crucial to have a place for the myriad of seasonal coats, jackets, rain gear, boots, horse riding gear, snow gear and shoes. Not to mention all the backpacks, briefcases, purses and such. We decided to move our laundry room downstairs to an unfinished room in the basement to have plenty of laundry room space, and plenty of mud room space. It has worked very well!

I came across this wonderful idea in the Ikea catalog of how to make our laundry room more functional. I purchased five sets of This Antonius Frame , and added some wire baskets and a nice large plastic tub/drawer to serve as a laundry basket for each family member. It's hard to see in this picture below - but it has a long white counter top across the top of all the baskets to serve as a folding station. I LOVE THIS!! Who knew it could make me so happy? I used to fold laundry on the couch and coffee table in the basement, but now that it has been turned into a schoolroom - I found myself trying to fold laundry all over the house and it just wasn't working so well. This little very inexpensive set up has been perfect!!

I just throw all the laundry right there on the counter, and as I fold it I place everything in the designated baskets - see? They even have names on them!

Then each family member simply slides their baskets right out of the frames and takes them (two flights up!!) to their bedrooms to be put away. Perfect solution.

This is going to be a huge help for this mama!

No more stacks of folded laundry all over the house (or on my bed) waiting to be put away. It has a nice neat home while waiting. :) I will simply add to the kids daily chore charts "put away laundry" - quick and easy.

And I even layed down some very inexpensive resilient wood-look-alike flooring in there since it was just an unfinished concrete floor.

And this is last week's project - I tackled the mudroom. I replaced the flooring in there as well with the same tiles I used in our powder room re-do. This tiny little room was in need of a major clean out and purge as well, since this is where those things that don't have a home tend to land. Also know as the "walk in the house and drop everything in here" room.

This tiny space is where our washer and dryer used to be - nuts isn't it?? The garage door to the right and the hallway door to the left. It works so much better as a mud room - I love having a main-living-level hamper right there in the pull out hamper on the bottom left. Perfect for dish towels and dirty socks!!

Perfect spots for doggy leashes and collars!

This is a rare summer time appearance of the additional coat rack space behind the door - most of the year it is covered in coats and jackets! (Jennie - you can just see peeking out on the left some cute little clothes for AJ that I will send you this week!).

The theme of these end-of-summer days is re-organization!! Can ya tell?? I'm officially done with all my summer time projects (the kitchen backsplash is going to have to wait a while), and I'm ready to run full-force with the homeschool planning, back to school shopping (for the Punkin), and getting fall routines and school and homeschool schedules figured out.