Week 2: $100 Laundry Room Challenge

Last week I (embarrassingly) took you into the “belly of the beast” (aka “my laundry room”). See last week’s $100 Room Challenge post here. I guess I shouldn’t give this room a hard time…. It’s not its fault; it works hard; it does its best. It just has so.many.things that are being stored in it. 

But let’s face facts. It is not as functional as it could be and there is also the glaring issue of being in desperate need of PAINT. (It’s just “ick.” To the max.) 

Nothing has been done in here since we moved in. AND It’s TIME! (Let’s be serious, I don’t think much has been done in here since the house was built 33 years ago.)

So this past week, the big order of business was to remove everything that was actually IN the laundry (minus the actual washer and dryer-we’re going to move them out when we paint). 

So the word for this week was: PURGE. 

The Purge

I went through pretty much everything in this space. This is actually something I like doing (I know, I’m a total weirdo. Can we PLEASE still be friends??).

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There is just something about getting rid of clutter that just makes me feel calmer; it’s like a giant exhale and sigh of relief. (Anyone else? Am I alone in this? Where my “Type A” sisters at?)

So I loaded up trash bags full of things for either Goodwill or the dumpster. It.felt.great! 

You know about Pandora’s box? Well that’s sorta what this project turned into this week….

After going through everything in the laundry room and determining what I wanted to keep, I still needed to move everything out. I didn’t want everything sitting out all over the kitchen for the next 2 1/2 weeks (a toddler parent’s nightmare!), so I wanted to try and put things (mostly) in cabinets and other closets.

Well, this led to me going through not just the laundry room/closet, but about 10 more cabinets and closets. (Why stop with one? Ha!) But it was great to clean things out; it opened up space to store everything from the laundry room. Needless to say, our trashcan is overflowing and I am counting down the days ’till my son’s favorite day of the week: “chash chuck” day. 

It feels good to have the “stuff” contained and not all over the house. (Well, technically it IS all over the house….the things that were in the laundry room are temporarily being stored in my closet, my husband’s closet, the linen closet, bathroom cabinet, and some kitchen cabinets. So, while it IS all over the house, it’s not sitting OUT all over the house. 

Roadtrip

Another thing we did this week was go to the “mothership” (aka “my favorite place on earth”). 

IKEA [Cue heavenly choir of melodic angels singing].

I absolutely love IKEA. And the bargain-hunter in me loves the good deals that can be had there! 

We were on the hunt for some shades to use to cover up some shelves we are going to install. (Cabinets are not in the budget!) I saw some in the catalog (these here), but didn’t realize that they only hang down and can’t be retracted. Boo. They had some awesome shades that would work, but at $20ish per blind they were way over our price point. 

So we had to rethink some things and ended up getting some curtain rods and clips. We will use these to put up a curtain to have “closed” storage on our shelves above the washer and dryer. 

We also got some brackets (for said shelves) that we think we will be using. We are going to price things this weekend to see if it would be cheaper to use the IKEA brackets, or to make something ourselves. 

Down They Go

Speaking of shelves. Another new development for this week? The wire shelves came down!! (Wahoo!) Now, the walls DEFINITELY look dingy (they did before, but I was just hoping you didn’t notice too much….) I can’t WAIT to get all those holes patched and get some fresh paint on the walls! 

Recap of progress made this week:

1. Went through everything in laundry room and decided what needed to be kept, trashed, or donated.
2. Moved everything OUT of the laundry room.
3. Went to IKEA. 
4. Took down wire shelves. 

That’s all so far! The plan for this week is to start designing where the shelves will go and to begin getting them hung! [I’m kind of giddy over here. It’s the little things, people!]

Check out the links below to see some of the talented bloggers who are working on this challenge too! You will be blown away by what they are able to do with $100!

What space in your home could use some organizing? Let me know in the comments!