Yay! It’s Monday.  Know what that means:

Yep.  Welcome to another installment of my home!  Guess what.  Our laundry room is upstairs.  Well, it’s not a laundry room.  It’s more like a laundry closet.  Either way, it’s upstairs.  Now, if you had asked me if this was priority when we were house hunting, I would have said far from it.  But, having a laundry room on the same floor and right near the bedrooms, bathrooms, and the like.  Well, it’s pretty wonderful!  Not that our previous house had the laundry far away.  But, to have it on the same floor is a nice perk.

Here’s what it looked like before we attacked with our organizational ninja skillz.

One lonely shelf.  To the bottom right, you can see the kids laundry bags.  Each kid has a bag that they haul their clean clothes in to their room and put up.  Got them from ABC distributing and had the kids names embroidered.  I didn’t see if they sold them but they are similar to the Utility Totes that Thirty-One makes only a lot cheaper (and cheaply made too…one day I’ll replace with sturdier ones and they’ll traipse off to college with those things).  They were piled in the floor and our upstairs cleaning supplies were here.

On the floor.  Well, most of the time they sat on the dryer and would have to be moved to the floor.  Along with our cleaning supplies, I had a tub for stained clothes and one for hang dry clothes.  They sat on the floor or on the dryer.

Here’s the after:

We added the shelf below the existing and a shelf to the right.  Mark’s already whacked his head on the right handed shelf but if we went higher it would’ve been too high for us to reach from the floor.  We’re blessed that Mark and I are fairly tall so we can get away with some height to our shelves.  I purchased the pink fabric boxes at Ross on a date night.  $7 for two.  Yep.  That rocked.  They hold my “hang dry” clothes in one and stained clothes (with the stain remover spray and such) in the one on the dryer.  I still need to make labels.  Every time I sit down to do that I get distracted by someone in the home. 

Let me say that our object this organizational go round is not for cutsie decor.  Our goal is to get this house organized.  We’ll use any means necessary and when I can afford to and we have time, I’ll throw in some cutsie decor.  The baskets on the top shelf hold clothespins and spare cleaning cloths.

To the top left, we have our homemade laundry detergent supplies.  Recently, I had coupons for a few of the supplies so I grabbed them up.  I use the store bought detergent for diapers because the borax in homemade detergent will eat away the diapers.

Here’s my cutsie for the laundry room.  I love Amazon Prime. Got this cute vinyl decal in two days!  I’ll use this side to hang up clothes that need to air dry as needed.

This is outside my laundry room.  My mom was able to save a few of my grandmother’s paintings when she died.  She studied art in Washington DC when she worked at the Pentagon (isn’t that cool).  My mom told me that she took classes with her mom at a local college and they worked on this painting together.  Mom said she painted the water pump and laundry and my grandmother filled in the rest.  I giggled though when I pulled it out to frame it.  The water pump is as big as the house.  Mom said it’s all about perspective.  I told her I bet that’s why Nana had never put it out to display.  She was a bit of a perfectionist.

Since the laundry room is miniscule.  I thought I’d share another area of our house.  The landing at the top of the stairs.  I know.  Not too exciting, but I did put this there:

Our changing area.  It’s the perfect spot.  I have to confess that after carrying a toddler or 6 month old up the steps, Mark and I usually collapse on the landing and just change the diaper there.  But, should we be blessed with a new baby in the future, he or she will get changed on the table.  For awhile.

This leads to my most favorite painting my mom was able to find.

You may not be able to see it very well, but it’s the one on the left hand side.  The canvas board that was used is stained and tattered and the picture is not quite done but I just think it’s beautiful.  Nana rarely painted people.  But she chose this of a mother cradling her child.  I don’t know who it is, but I’ll pretend it’s my mom and either my sister or me.  It’s not quite finished.  Mom doesn’t have hair and not much else is drawn, but the picture, even unfinished is beautiful.  A friend said it’s symbolic of motherhood, you’re never completely finished being a mom and your little one will always be your baby.  I remember seeing this picture as I snooped through all her unfinished paintings and being told to promptly leave them alone.  So, to have this picture is a treasure to me.