Saturday, July 10, 2010

Airing my Dirty Laundry-- My Laundry Room Needs Your Help

If you've been following my blog over the last year, you know that I've been furnishing and accessorizing up a storm. You've seen my progress in a series of bad iPhone pictures. You know you're a terrible photographer when people who've seen the house on my blog come over and say, "Wow, this looks so much better in person," and that seems to be the general consensus.

When we moved into the house, I figured that it would take me the first few years to get the inside of the house under control, and then I could move to the outside. I'm not completely done yet, but other than putting pictures on the bathroom walls, I have a pretty good vision of where the unfinished rooms are going. I've picked out the new living room couch, but don't want to buy it until we go to Minnesota and have a chance to actually sit on it.  Once I muster up the energy to make another mammoth trip to IKEA, I can finish up the playroom cabinetry, but after the bookshelf of death experience, that may be a while. But there's one spot that I can't wrap my head around, and I need your help. I've moved up the self-imposed deadline (at least the visionary deadline, not the completed deadline) to when school starts at the end of next month, because once I'm taking four classes and teaching another, I doubt that dreaming up what I'm going to do with cabinetry and tchotchkes will be high on my list of priorities.

Here's what I want from the room:
  • I'd like each kid to have his or her own space for bags, shoes and jackets, and if I could figure out a way to make space for the adults, that would be a very nice bonus. 
  • Space for ironing, and either room for the ironing board to be left out, or else some cool ironing board solution that wouldn't necessitate me dragging it out from a closet every time it needs to be used.
  • Closed storage for the bleach and the cleaning supplies.
  • A good dirty laundry solution.
  • A place to display my kids' artwork, a whiteboard for messages, and a spot to tack up things like the school notices and birthday party invites that threaten to overtake the kitchen desk.
Here are even more bad iPhone pictures of what the space looks like:

The main dumping zone. Those are my kids' backpacks, our swim bag, and the mammoth church bag, thrown haphazardly over and under the bench we used in our Texas kitchen. I hate haphazard. I want a place for everything so I can yell at people when they don't put their stuff away right. We also have a small shoe rack in there, but I don't think we ever actually use it for shoes. You'll notice that both Eddie and I have our ditch boots next to the bench. Those need a more permanent home.

Here's where things get really bad. I think that white shelf was in a closet somewhere in our house in Texas, and when we got here, I just tossed it up and forgot about it, but as you can see, pretty it ain't. That huge dark mass on top of the top shelf is my ironing basket, and priority number one is somewhere to hide the dang thing. I never tackle it until it's full, and now that I know that about myself I might as well not torture myself by having it out in plain sight all the time. I'd also like to be able to hide the assorted bottles and containers, especially the ones I don't use on a daily basis. I'll never be a "Real Simple" kind of girl who rebottles her laundry soap in pretty glass containers, so that stuff needs to find a hiding place. I do use a garbage can frequently, but it doesn't necessarily need to be that garbage can if something else would work better.




Moving clockwise around the room, the next problem spot is the ironing board. I like keeping my ironing board out (it gives the illusion that I actually keep up on my ironing), but I also know that space is at a premium in this room, especially if I want it to function as a mud room and a laundry room, so I'm amenable to other options, especially if they're good looking. My main requirement is that there must be room for me to have the ironing board out in this room and still walk without toppling the iron over on top of myself. You'll also notice that there's a laundry basket on the floor near the ironing board. It's not cute, but it is functional. This is where I collect dirty stuff I find throughout the house, in preparation for the "load of all colors" that I do every morning (breathe, Mom, it's okay). There's a vent on the floor under the ironing board, so any storage furniture we put in here must be on legs.



Finally, here's the last wall of the room. The door you see at the end of the hallway is our side entrance and the molding on the right side is where our pantry is located. It's basically a walkway, so I'm thinking that whatever we do here needs to be flush to the wall.

Any advice? I haven't looked much, and the looking I have done has been at IKEA, since I'm on a first name basis with Tom at the info desk since starting the basement project. I found this on IKEA hacker, and love it, but I'm willing to look outside the big blue and yellow box, so whatever suggestions you have would be greatly appreciated.



3 comments:

TJ said...

a friends mom has her ironing board in a small cupboard. i think they built it just for the ironing board. so, when you're done with it, you just put it up into the cupboard and shut it, and voila, it's gone.

Char @ Crap I've Made said...

I have this: http://www.homedecorators.com/P/Hampton_Bay_Quadruple_Tilt-Out_Hamper/830/

(the quad in white, if that link doesn't work)

LOVE it.

I just have an over the door ironing board on the back of the door and I keep the iron and other stuff in an upper cabinet. My laundry room is tiny and on the 2nd story, so I can only dream of the rest of that organizational bliss.

Vanessa said...

I emailed you a file with some ideas.

Are you going to paint the room at all?