Laundry Room

The fact that our current house has a separate laundry room makes me super happy. I’ve never had a real laundry room. Previously, we either did laundry in the basement or in a shallow closet off the kitchen. I always dreamed that a laundry room would help solve the problem of laundry in various stages being all over the living room. Unfortunately, I’m writing this post sitting on the couch in a pile of (clean) laundry, so that dream didn’t come true.

But having a laundry room is still awesome. Plus, ours is pretty big and there’s room for cleaning supplies, a work station, and a whole closet to store crafting and entertaining supplies! What more could a girl want?

Well, quite a bit, it turns out. Here’s what the laundry room looked like when we moved in. Pretty gross, just like everything else in the house. One of the very first things we did was cover that ugly linoleum with self-adhesive tiles, following my own tutorial for how to install self-adhesive vinyl tile. We grouted the vinyl tile, as well. I think the extra step makes it look SO much more like real tile. We used Traffic Master Coastal Grey Vinyl Tile. I ordered it through the Home Depot website and had it shipped to the store to save on shipping. If you looked closely at the first picture, you might have noticed that I didn’t order quite enough. I am still short one box to finish the closet.

The room gets really warm in the afternoon, so we added a bamboo shade to help block some of the heat. I like that it still lets plenty of light in, even when it’s closed all the way. I’ve thought about adding a thicker lining to the back because along with light it still lets heat in, but I’m not sure I want to make that trade-off.

I love that there’s also room for a small table for crafting and sewing. When I was organizing in here, I found the orange bulletin board I made for our last home. So I hung it on a random nail that was already in the wall. It’s displaying the color palette for our home. The hook next to it holds another set of identical paint chips that can come with me when I’m out on the home decor hunt. The colorful laundry hampers were from TJ Maxx. It was kind of tricky to find fun laundry hampers and not just the woven basket style. Usually one holds towels and one holds gross clothes. There are other hampers in our bedroom and Jaye’s bedroom.

Still on the list for this room:

• Paint.
• Paint closet.
• Switch out light fixture.
• Paint/Refresh wall cabinets somehow.
• Improve cleaning supply storage.
• Unpack last few boxes.
• Replace outlets and light switch for white.
• Repair access to underneath house (in the closet).
• Finish vinyl tile in the closet.
• Improve shelving in closet to make it even more efficient.
• Change light fixture (?).
• Add something for wall art.