I knew that a small part of our spring break would be spent spring cleaning. It just comes about naturally. We start to pull out the shorts, then there’s a bag of clothes to give away. The scooters come out from the garage and the socks and shoes from the morning are exchanged for sandals. (Pile of socks in the laundry room floor.) Towels for the backyard picnic now need a wash…
The laundry room. I’m not sure about yours but ours has been neglected and dumped upon for a while. We transformed the laundry room a few years ago and it has served its purpose well. And speaking of purpose…
My friend Lauren Hill of Mama’s Laundry Talk has just the book that saved our laundry room and gave it purpose again! Spring Cleaning: The Laundry Room – 7 Steps to Get Your Laundry Room Under Control has a detailed checklist.
In her book, Lauren encourages us to define the purpose of the laundry room. Ours is three fold:
- Laundry for this hodgepodge family of seven
- Linen ‘closet’ for the most used bathroom across the hall
- Arts and crafts storage for all our art for all ages!
This multi-purpose room has a BIG job! (Our laundry room does not have a window, so I apologize for these somewhat dark photos.) And it had gotten to be a BIG mess! So, with a lot of help from my Middle Girl, we pulled everything out, we purged and we cleaned. Deep cleaned. I reluctantly share the before photos…
With breaks, this transformation took the two of us a total of two hours. (Lauren even has tips for those of us with little ones. Oh how I love the practical!)
Laundry Room Organization and Decoration
And now I can notice again those little things we did to the room that made the laundry room a happy spot in the house. On the walls:
- Bible verse from Doorposts – the Word Within Sight
- Sunday school decorations by kindergartener
Art and craft supplies on the inside wall. Those wonderful, giant bottles of acrylic paint that Nana gave us used to be stacked on the floor of the laundry room. Now they have a place in the wall organizer! This makes me so happy!
We can reach the service opportunities chalkboard again! More on how we made this chalkboard in Service Opportunities: An Upgrade (Part 3 in a series on Chores or Service Opportunities?)
There is room on the laundry room floor now for:
- a trash can for all that dryer lint
- the giant container of homemade laundry detergent
- paper products
And there is room on top of both the washer and dryer – for folding!
Now it’s a multi-purpose room with real purpose and room to work! I am talking two hours of investment and my daughter says, “Wow! I can open the door all the way now. There isn’t anything in the way on the floor.”
Be sure to head over to Lauren’s Mama’s Laundry Talk and get your copy of Spring Cleaning: The Laundry Room. It’s only 99 cents!!! And it’s too (my Amazon affiliate link).
Yes, this was my laundry room before — > “Is your Laundry Room a disaster? Is it impossible to even get to the washing machine because there’s so much “stuff” in the floor? Are you certain you have another container of laundry detergent somewhere…but have no idea where it is in this pile of clutter?”
And in the seven simple steps, we got it under control.
Thank you Lauren!
Leave a Reply