Saturday, May 31, 2014

The Laundry Room: Solution

If you're behind (or need a refresher), click on the following links to see: The Laundry Room: Problem Part 1 and Part 2.
Here's what I've done since then.
(which, as it turns out, has been about a year ago)

I had the idea some time ago to use laundry symbols to make a sign to put on the door to the laundry room. I found a free font, SL Wash, downloaded it, and picked the symbols that I wanted. I picked up an inexpensive wooden sign from JoAnn's, spray painted a white base on the sign, then used my Silhouette machine to cut out my shapes. I applied them where I wanted them, then spray painted over them in a bright green color, and topped it off with a clear coat of enamel. This was the result:
Um, or not. I still love the idea of this, but I never got around to actually doing it. I also hemmed and hawed with recreating another laundry sign similar to one I found on etsy, but I never did that either. Enter Hobby Lobby. I <3 that store. I'm fairly certain that I hadn't been there since the birth of my daughter, and that store is now umpteen-million times more hazardous to my wallet. Goodness!
Anyway, I stumbled across an awesome metal sign, and snatched it up. Here it is on my laundry room door:

(love it!)


I saw this on Pinterest, loved the idea, and made 8x10 prints of my son splashing in a bucket, and voila! I used these super cute clips that I found at Dollar Tree instead of the pants hangers - I thought they added a little pop of color, plus looked similar to clothes pins. I mounted the pictures on foam board (harder to do than I expected -- I couldn't find my exacto knife) to give them more stability. I picked up a DIGNITET line from IKEA, and mounted that above the washer and dryer to look like a clothesline. Cute, right?



I also stumbled across this amazing print, and had to print it out and hang it up!



As much as I loved this, it was substantially smaller than the wall art I had previously...but I didn't know what I wanted to add with it. I scoured Pinterest for what felt like forever. Then, somewhat unintentionally, stumbled across inspiration. I had found and really liked this print:


...only to discover that it was an original that had sold, and not a print. Sad day.

I found these via Pinterest (and if you go here, you can get the free digital file to make your own!):



And, somehow, the two things fused in my head, and mixed around, and I came up with a plan! I went to Hobby Lobby (swoon!), grabbed two unfinished decorative wood boards, spray painted them, then drew clothespin shapes on the back of scrapbook paper, cut them out, mod-podged a sheet of white watercolor paper to the boards, then the scrapbook clothespins to the paper. Once they were dry, I drew the metal piece with a silver Sharpe. Voila!:




As for all my storage, I didn't really change things up all that much. I already had all the canvas bins, and had recently reorganized all of those, so that wasn't really all that challenging. I shuffled a few things around, moved some of the more "cluttery" looking items to places where they were less visible, and that helped a lot. I attempted to use  name tags to label my fabric bins, but that was a wash (haha, "wash," get it? In a laundry room? I'm so punny!). You can see in the picture how they're peeling off, but I'm still pleased with the way everything is organized:

(might I just add that it's incredibly difficult to get a picture of this part of the laundry room?!?)

I'd still like to devise a way to hide the hook ups behind the washer and dryer (something like this, perhaps?), maybe switch up the rug, and find a way to incorporate laundry hampers above the washer and  dryer, but those will have to wait!

Here is the final (for now) result!:






Well, whaddya think?

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