You guys, my laundry room is clean. I am so happy!
(I thought about labeling this "before and after" but then I thought you all might think I'd gone and actually made my laundry room beautiful by turning it into a finished room. But nope. I just cleaned it. And I doubt we will ever make this into one of those beautiful laundry rooms one sees on home design sites. So, clean and neat is as good as it will get!)
I actually got this job crossed off of my list last week, but haven't gotten around to posting the pictures until now.
You may remember that I got my laundry room all neat and tidy a few years ago.
But somehow over the course of the years, this room had descended into a really super not-awesome state.
And I REALLY mean that.
I know sometimes bloggers are all, "OH. MY. SOUL. My house is a WRECK."
Then you see the photo and there are, like, 5 things on the floor.
You guys, I had way more than five things on the floor.
As you may imagine, actually getting in there to do laundry was becoming a bit of a challenge.
My "pantry" shelf was so disorganized, I had no room for anything, so when I bought stuff, I had to put it on the floor.
Once I started working on decluttering/cleaning, the view actually got worse for a while.
This is the point where I usually want to quit.
But I did eventually find the floor after much sorting, recycling, freecycling, trashing, and organizing.
Problem is, once I found the floor, the worn floor paint (and the part of the floor that never got painted because the old freezer was larger) began to bother me.
Plus, I'd just found the bucket of floor paint while I was organizing all my paint cans.
So, in an uncharacteristic move, I decided to paint the floor on the spur of the moment. I'm pretty much the opposite of a perfectionist, so I'm sort of surprised I did this.
However, my non-perfectionism came out in the fact that I did not paint the part of the floor that is normally covered by the gray mat. 😉
I am SO happy I decided to repaint the floor. It makes the whole room seem fresh and clean.
Episodes of Brilliant Business Moms kept me company during this whole project, by the way. 😉
I got rid of some paint we no longer need (like the old color from before Joshua's room re-do).
Also, I corralled all of my painting supplies into one box.
I never actually put them away properly after we finished Joshua's bed and room, so this was a little overdue. Ha.
My shelving unit doesn't actually look impressively neat, but it is way more organized than it was before and there are no bags of groceries on the floor.
I have no pantry in my kitchen, so this shelf serves as my ugly and somewhat inconvenient pantry. But it is way better than nothing!
There are still some areas in the laundry room that could use some purging and organizing...like these shelves.
And this toolbox area.
But I'm pretty sure I need to collaborate with Mr. FG on that, and besides, this mess wasn't keeping me from getting to the washer and dryer. 😉
It can wait.
So, here's the view from before.
And here's the view now.
It's been over a week since I finished this, and still, whenever I walk in there, I'm all, "What in the world is this?? A clear floor??"
Hopefully I will do a good job of maintaining this. I usually do awesome for a while, but then things slowly pile up.
The problem, I think, is with letting a few things pile up.
If I keep a surface clear, then it feels wrong to clutter it up.
But once a bunch of clutter is there already, then it seems sensible to just keep piling things up. 😉
(Tell me I'm not the only one!!)
So, here's to not letting that first thing sit on the floor.
No, you aren't the only one.
It looks fabulous. Good for you!
It looks fabulous, and you should be proud of yourself for powering through!!
I read an organizing blog called "I heart organizing". She recently tackled a project like this (in her home), and your before pictures aren't worse than hers! And this is someone who loves organizing. She also wrote a post recently about her process for tackling an area, and her in progress pictures looked like yours, too. So there's that.
One of her tips for keeping something organized is to find an aspect of it being organized to motivate you. Hers is 'make it pretty'.
You could totally put a curtain in front of your pantry shelves if you wanted to. Velcro would work, but to make it most accessible, I think some kind of rod would be better.
Come to think of it, you could paint it white and that might make a difference!! If you decide you want to change it, that is.
Either way, very inspiring!!
Great job! Very inspiring. Can I make a suggestion? You have cleaning products and such stored above food. As a former restaurant manager, the health department really frowned on this because something could leak on your food.
Interesting...I hadn't thought of that. I'm not sure how a product could get down to my food, though, because the shelving is really thick.
But I probably could rearrange a bit to move them down to a lower area, just in case.
It's good practice to put the more toxis items below consumables. It's the same principle by which we put meat on a lower fridge shelf - just in case it drips. We think we have things set up but... For example, a cleaning chemical could drip down off a higher shelf and a drip hit the flour bags, or someone removing a chemical container could bobble it or drop it.
Thank you!! I was about to comment on this as well. First thing I noticed!! Well second to the fact that it looks great!! At the very least you might use plastic trays under the cleaning items.
I'm wondering if this is mostly an issue with wire-rack shelving? Mine are thick plywood shelves, which would stop any drips. But restaurant shelving is usually wire rack, right?
Well, I do understand the concern about cleaning supplies above the food. However, as a Grandma to a 2 year old, I'd want the cleaning supplies as high as I could get them. 🙂
That's what I was thinking, too---when we were Foster Parents, they'd flunk the whole house if we didn't have cleaning products way up high. That may no longer be an issue for you guys, tho.
And your room looks GREAT! I'm impressed with you all OVER again!! Esp since you "kept it real" by showing how much it gotten to look some of OUR areas. 🙂
I think they're up there because that's where they were homed when our kids were little. Somehow, they've just kinda stayed there! I've never had a leaking problem, and even if one did leak, there's a super thick, solid shelf below the products. So, I guess that's why I've never thought of moving them.
Come to think of it, I barely use any of that stuff, so maybe I could just freecycle it. And then I'd have (da-da-duh!) some extra space.
Yep, first thing I spotted was the chemicals over the squash. Room looks great! Your kids are older, no reason to keep the chemicals up high.
Kristen - You are definitely not the only one! It's amazing how "organized" turns back into "chaos" with very little effort. I have a lot of areas in my house right now that look similar to your laundry room.
The book "Home Comforts" references that very phenomenon, of putting one thing down somewhere, and then that location becomes a magnet for more clutter. So no, you are obviously not the only one.
My laundry area is in our dirt-floor, stone-walled cellar--nicknamed "The Pit of Despair"--so when I do laundry, I'm just trying to keep from dropping my clean clothes on the filthy floor or accidentally pulling them up too hard and swiping the cobweb-festooned ceiling with them.
Your laundry room looks like a dream to me. Which just goes to show, everything is relative.
Kristen--thank you for being so real. The way you make do with what you have and take pleasure in it are so inspiring to me.
You're right-- that is the first "I'm so messy" photo that is *actually* what a reasonable person could consider messy. Though it's missing cobwebs and dust!
Impressive work! I had no idea that floor paint existed. That is a really cool thing.
It is really wonderful stuff for plain concrete floors, which seem to manufacture dust when left unfinished. A coat of floor paint makes it so much less messy and also much easier to clean. And it's not overly toxis, like epoxy-based stuff...this is just latex paint designed for floors.
you aren't the only one. My desk is on the 2nd floor. It is so much easier to just drop paperwork there rather than file it right away (or even monthly).
You're not the only one. With me it's the area in my kitchen on the floor in front of my shelves. I have a unit similar to what you have for my small appliances and food stuff. When I shop I have some things that need to go down to the jelly closet in the basement. I put it all in a big bag or two to be brought down. That stuff can be waiting there in front of the shelves for weeks. Sighhh...sometimes we consume the stuff before it can ever get down there. I know.
I am always amazed at how fast things pile up. If there is one thing on the floor of our storage area within days every time someone walks in there instead of putting whatever it is away they just pile in on the one thing that started the problem. All it takes is one thing. 🙁
I'm inspired! I think I will plan to work on my basement laundry room this weekend!
I thought I'm the only one who makes our laundry room as our pantry too.
Looks great! Must be easier to do laundry, too. Did you move things before you painted, or did you paint around the large pieces?
My laundry room rarely gets very messy (office and garage are my problem spaces) but I wish there were a reasonable way to spruce it up. Unfortunately the floors are linoleum tile so not worth the work to replace. The washer and dryer can't be moved without moving the plumbing. To paint the wall shelf covered in ugly contact paper I'd have to take it down, which would likely damage the wall, making the wall more unsightly than before. So I try to content myself with a mostly-organized functional space that doesn't cost me more.
The room does have a full storage shelf. So when I find a deal for toilet scrubber for $.25/bottle or the never-on-sale floor cleaner for half price, I can buy several dozen. *That* makes me happy.
PS - despite having an almost obscene amount of kitchen cabinet space, my panty has wandered out into the garage as well.
I didn't move things like the washer and dryer and whatnot. I just moved the easy stuff out of the main parts of the floor and painted those (the original paint under things like the washer was still in good shape! Just the high traffic areas were bad.)
Very inspirational. I need to print out the before and after pictures for motivational purposes!
This post makes me really happy because we usually only get a small view of your laundry room and it always looks neat and clean. I was relieved to see that I'm not the only person who has a hard time keeping tools, paint, etc. organized and out of the way! 🙂
Of course you aren't the only one. Why else would there be a proliferation of "how to get yourself organized ... " books and articles out there? It's because most of us have that "I really should clean and organize my blah-blah area" but in most cases it takes a minor catastrophe to make it happen.
Sara at gogingham.com has just finished a cleaning and organizing year--she worked on a different area of her home each week for the past year and blogged about it. She also had some "before" pictures that looked like your laundry area. Like you. she kept it real. I personally find it reassuring to know that A) other people have a perpetually messy area in their homes and B) others also have modest homes with laundry facilities in an unfinished basement and their laundry areas look functional, not "pretty". Whew. Takes the pressure off.
Did you recycle, freecycle and trash a lot or was it more putting things where they belong? There looks like so much more room afterwards. It looks great!
Happily, I was able to recycle a fair amount of stuff. Paper clutter is good like that. I did have to throw away some things like dried-up paint, but I freecycled some stuff and put a number of things in my pile to donate to the homeless shelter as well.
So, this is good, because when I take something OUT of the house, that means I don't have to deal with it anymore. This is infinitely preferable to just rearranging stuff, in my opinion.
I have painted my basement floor as well - it makes SUCH a difference! I am just about to embark on a fix up of our own basement laundry room. My 1teenage son has a room in the finished part of the basement - once he moved down there he began treating the laundry room as his closet. Not that he hangs things, he just leaves laundry everywhere ! (My boys (15 and 12, are in charge of their own laundry, which can be painful at times, but all in all, good for them, I hope!).
I did note that it looks as if you keep the paint near the hot water tank? Wondering if it the heat tends to make the paint dry out quicker?
You know, I'm not sure! The problem is that no matter where I put the paint in that room, it will be near a heating source...the heat pump, the hot water heater, the dryer, or the warm side of the freezer where the motor vents. Fortunately (??) the laundry room is not heated or insulated, so even next to a heat source, the paint never gets particularly warm or dry!
My laundry room is also a storage area, with some edibles, some tools, some pet items, and oh, yes, laundry and cleaning supplies. I fight constantly to find more room and keep it more organized, and I lose constantly, but I haven't given up hope. My biggest problem now is the sheet vinyl floor which is cut, stained, and curling away from the door sills. My mind boggles at the thought of moving washer, dryer, freezer, homemade heavy wooden cabinet and mini-fridge to pull up the old floor. Plus I don't know what we'd do about the flooring under the water heater. I might add that while I can produce some clutter until I go on a purging and cleaning frenzy every couple of weeks, it's my husband who totally sabotages my efforts by dumping all his stuff in there at random. I'll organize it, he'll go looking for something, and it's all overturned and tossed about the next time I look. He's dyslexic and strongly has that tendency some dyslexics have to disorganization ( as does my dyslexic daughter, but she's in her own place now, and that's HER problem these days.)
I have several comments!
First - LOL. I love that you previously hadn't painted one spot because the freezer was there. And now you didn't paint a spot because the rug is there. That just had me cracking up!
Second - We have the same chest freezer you do! Those baskets are great. 🙂 I clicked the previous laundry room post, which I had read before, which led me to the freezer post from 2009, which I hadn't read before. I guess I didn't read your blog quite that long ago. I think ours is a slightly newer model than yours, because instead of the compartments on the bottom layer, ours came with a second set of baskets (slightly different from the top baskets) for the bottom layer.
Third - I just think this is a great space. It's a fairly big room that is perfect to store all of that borderline inside/garage stuff that you don't really know where to put (sleeping bags, tools, suitcases, etc.)
Yeah...no one will ever mistake me for a perfectionist. And I'm pretty much at peace with that. 😉
I admit... it made my perfectionist self cringe! 🙂 To each her own.
Oh, exactly. You have to do what works for you. For me, a partially painted floor (where the partially painted part is always covered up) is what works. I don't lose any sleep over it at all, which is unimaginable to a perfectionist, I am sure. Heh.
The only advice I'll give (from a recovering hoarder and pack rat) is that you have to deal with it at the moment or it just returns to the old way. I'm working on it, but I'm still struggling.
Also, all that flour stored in the open makes me worry about bugs and such. I always freeze my flour (to kill any weevil eggs) and then put it in 5 gallon food safe buckets. No bugs or rodents have got into them yet!
Interestingly enough, I've always stored my flour this way and have never had an issue. I have no idea why!
Much to my distress I discovered that my flour that was stored in the laundry room had absorbed flavors/odors from the laundry supplies. 8 dozen shortbread in the garbage just before Christmas. All the flour is now in glass jars. I've never had a problem with bugs though.
I did that once! Some kind of soap was near the powdered sugar and I made lemon bars that tasted of soap. Ugh.
You are not the only one. Thanks for keeping it realistic. With me it is a long counter in my kitchen that isn't wide enough to prep food but perfect for dumping mail, groceries I didn't get put away and paperwork I meant to work on. Once one thing hits that counter it quickly draws dozens of others. It is clean now. We will see how long it lasts.
Thank you for doing this post! You have made me smile this morning -- especially about the painting (some of) the floor freedom you "flaunted" -- good for you! Makes me feel much less alone with my household chaos. I love this real type of before and after clean-ups WAY better than the fancy room make-overs. Keep doing more, please!
Today is my husband's every-other-Friday off, so we are finally tackling the Christmas decorations. We were called away twice in December because my parents are ill, and I couldn't bear the thought of taking down the cheery decor as soon as we got home. Though it's not the same as your laundry, this post is inspiring me to get it all done today, for which I thank you very much.
That looks fabulous! The paint was a nice touch and might make it easier to stay motivated. I definitely find that if I put one thing down, it's not just that I put down more--my husband does, too. Like with dishes in the sink. Gotta lead by example :-)/
Loved reading this post as I'm in the middle of cleaning out and washing my kitchen cabinets! How did you safely dispose of old paint? This always is a problem for me….
If it's dried out latex paint, then you can just throw it in the trash where I live. They are just concerned about the mess factor of wet paint.
But definitely check your county's trash website to see how they handle it. I imagine it varies somewhat from county to county.
I love that you have no desire for a fancy laundry room. It's sad to me when women lust after something they see in a magazine that they don't really need. I mean, it's a laundry room!
I appreciate your honesty so much. You are not the only one 🙂 And your post is more inspiring to me than any fancy-looking makeover in a magazine, because it's real and it's doable in my own home. And that's what counts to me.
I too struggle with horizontal surfaces and clutter. Sometime last year I read an article on conquering clutter. The one take away I remember from it was the phrase, "How about now?". When I see something out of place I typically think, "I can put that away later, or do it later". The problem is later almost never comes or by the time it does the item has let 10 more come to the party! When I pay attention and use this phrase when I see items out of place my surfaces are clearer. My current state of clutter would however attest to the fact that I don't use this phrase often enough 🙂
Oh, you're definitely not the only one on the "no clutter stays clean, a little bit of clutter becomes a lot of clutter." That's totally how things are at my house. And it applies to any flat surface, regardless of which room it's in.
I've never heard of painting a floor! What an intriguing idea... The floor in my laundry room is unfinished, but I never considered doing anything with a floor besides adding flooring. Since we live in a rental, it's not really worth the time and money to add flooring (even if we have been here two years with no firm plans for moving at this point...). But paint... that could make it feel better for minimal expense. *taps chin in thought*
You should totally do it! Super cheap, you can get it tinted to a bunch of shades, and it's easy.
Go paint!
First of all, it looks great and you must feel so good to have it done.
Second, I really want to know what's in the box lid in the photo where it got worse for awhile. What is that?!
I suppose that was sort of mysterious, huh? Those are seed pods from the hyacinth bean plants I put around my mailbox each year. You can see them in bloom in this post: https://www.thefrugalgirl.com/2010/09/know-whats-a-super-frugal-plant/
They're really beautiful and so easy to replant each year.
Aha! Much nicer and more innocuous than the possibilities in my imagination. Thanks for satisfying my curiosity.
1 trick I use for keeping an area clean and uncluttered is to really admire the nice clear area. Yes, as in "My, doesn't my nice, clean x look really wonderful. It's so easy to clean and use. Isn't it beautiful" Then I notice I'm a bit more motivated to keep it nice and tidy and put my stuff away properly the 1st time.
The other trick is house guests. Yes I had one over the holidays, and I did have to put away stuff. Now I'm enjoying the nice and clean and doesn't that look wonderful. Let's see how long it lasts. I'm trying, it's been a little over a week. So far so good.
Oh gosh, isn't that the truth? There is NOTHING like impending company to motivate some cleaning/decluttering.
I don't feel the *need* to unclutter for houseguests, because I am familiar with the 'five things on the floor' phenomenom and these people are my friends, after all. But I do like using them as an excuse/motivator. For my roommate, who is not as uncluttery as I am, houseguests are a motivator so I take advantage of the situation.
So opportunistic. 😉
Kristen,
The room looks lovely.
Is that an electric or gas powered hot water tank?
Does it have a flame?
If so, you should remove all those paint cans, since they are highly flammable and may possibly explode or catch fire. They are located too close to your hot water tank. FYI
Oh, nope, it has no flame. It's an electric water heater. No gas in this house!
Awesome job! And thrilled to hear you are listening to Brilliant Business Moms episodes! Thank you for the shout out.
You are not alone. I have piles in several rooms. Slowly working on them one at a time. Great Job!
Looks just fabulous! And, the Brilliant Business Moms are great for keeping you occupied during big projects. 🙂
"The problem, I think, is with letting a few things pile up. If I keep a surface clear, then it feels wrong to clutter it up." Uhhh...this is seriously the most profound thing I've read today. I'm going to tuck this away and hopefully it will help me with my struggle to maintain tidiness!
Thank you for being so honest. I often look at blogs and feel so badly because I have always struggled with clutter. Due to a long time of caring for an ageing parent, five people in a small space and my own illness our home needs more than a skip. You reassure me and I thank you.
You did a great job! Congrats! I know the feeling! Cheers!
I've been working on some organizing, purging projects this winter, while I'm on restrictions following back surgery. It's such a satisfying feeling to look into a clean, tidy room, although they never stay that way as long as I'd like. I'm hoping that someone at Goodwill is enjoying the things that we dropped off there, too! 🙂
I know the feeling so well! I purposely go and peek into whatever area of the house I've just organized to enjoy the view.
In our first home, we had a dedicated laundry area and it was always a challenge to keep it tidy. Now our laundry shares space with a bathroom and I have learned to pick up as we go or the whole area would be a total mess. The location keeps us in line!