The Little Makeover that Snowballed

I had a friend ask me recently if I'd ever finished painting my laundry room.  I finished painting the day I started, but the rest of the laundry room makeover took longer.  Nothing in the home improvement department takes place very quickly around here.   Part of my hesitation in starting the project in the first place was knowing that most of the stuff in the room would need to be relocated.  Thus, the snowball effect.  Or as my sister once so aptly put it, "It's like pulling the thread on a sweater, it just keeps unraveling."

The before.  I forgot to take a picture before I cleared out all the stuff.

Once Elizabeth returned from Uganda, she sewed some little curtains to hide the junk behind the laundry counter.  The curtains were made out of a Martha Stewart bed sheet that I picked up at the thrift store for $2.  I had to buy the tension rod, but I had the little clip hangers already.  They were a 25-cent yard sale find from a couple of years ago.

I had in my mind that I wanted vintage looking hooks to hang our aprons and a few other odds and ends.  I finally found what I wanted at Hobby Lobby for 50% off.  I commissioned Lydia to paint some water color pictures with a couple of my favorite Bible verses on them.  I already had the frames.  I also hung up a couple of thrift store plates that I've had for years.

The paint I used for the walls was a mixture of leftover bathroom paint and a bunch of free samples I had on my basement shelf.  So overall, this was a fairly cheap project, coming in at around $30.  I love the finished room.  It's a cheery corner in which to tackle a not-so-fun job.

 As I mentioned on Instagram, my laundry room is basically a closet in my kitchen.  I adore the convenience of having my washer and dryer so close to the hub of the house.  However, I've often been embarrassed when guests see the sorry state of that room.  No matter how many times I told the kids to keep the doors closed when we had people over, it just didn't happen.  I don't have to worry so much about that anymore.  That said, the laundry room counter is one of the few sacred places in our house. It's about the only place that's safe to put anything you don't want little kids to get into.  So sometimes it does get kind of cluttery, but that's life with littles.

Here's where the snowball comes in.  All of the junk in the laundry room, which mostly consisted of cleaning supplies, had to find another home in order to make this makeover successful.  I wanted to put all of the cleaning tools (mops, vacuums, brooms, etc.) in the family room closet, which is where the former homeowners stored such things.  So that meant that the stuff in the family room closet needed to move to the office closet.

Which meant that not only the office closet, but also the office itself needed to be cleaned and decluttered (so that I could actually get to the closet). Which in turn, lead to a whole house decluttering and even a back yard decluttering.

Our house is in no way minimalist, but too much stuff makes me nervous.  I stop by Goodwill about once a month to get rid of unneeded items, but a good overall purge was still in order.  After 20 years, I'm finally getting a full night's sleep most nights, which made it possible for me to even think of tackling such a big job.

However, ten people live in this house.  We are here most of the time.  Each day, three meals plus snacks are prepared,  2-3 loads of laundry are done,  2-4 dishwasher loads of dishes are run, plus schoolwork and all manner of creative projects are undertaken.  In other words, there's a lot of mess making going on.

One night last week, I was lamenting that all of my hard work to get this house ship shape seemed to be for naught.  The house spirals so quickly into disarray.   Matt said, "Look around you, Melissa. There's a lot going on here. Industry, hospitality, creativity, mission.  That's all messy, but useful work."  So even though the guy at the Goodwill donation site recognizes my car, things are still not as clean as I'd like them to be around here, but life is being lived to the full.  Lord, help me to remember it.