Small Laundry Room Makeover

Behold, my finished laundry space. It's beautiful, minimal, and functional!

I firmly believe that you should spend your decluttering and decorating energy in the spaces that you use the most. For many people, the best place to start their minimal journey is in their kitchen. That's where I started with Declutter 365. If the kitchen seems too overwhelming, a great place to begin minimizing or begin to decorate is your laundry space! [By the way, if your laundry situation is totally out of control, I highly recommend this podcast by Your Everyday Style.] If you are like me, you probably do a lot of laundry. I *wish* I could tell you that I decided to revamp my laundry space because I deserved a nicer space, but that's not how it started at all... it started because I didn't want to store my laundry detergent above my head... What? You see, one of the requirements for our foster care license (more on that later) was to contain all cleaners behind a locked door, and I'll be damned if I was going to reach allllllllll the way up to the cabinet for my laundry detergent, amirite? Here is the laundry room before:

Let's hit the highlights, shall we?

1. Couldn't I have moved my bra before taking a "before" picture? ::facepalm::

2. Can you guess what year our house was built just from the cabinet doors & hardware?

3. Most of the common areas of our house were painted this color when we moved in. I lovingly called it baby-poop-brown.

In true Handy Caitie fashion, I started this project on a Friday afternoon with the goal of it being an easy, weekend project. By Friday night, here's where we were:

1. Cleaned & emptied everything - isn't that best part of a new project?

2. Removed cabinet doors & hardware

3. Removed old curtain rod/ dowel/ drying rack

4. Lowered cabinet (with help of husband)

So much progress, right?

Well then, the next day, as with all projects, I created total chaos. 🙃 I had to move the appliances to get behind them to paint. Normal people might be able to skip painting behind things that never move, but I would lose sleep over it. ::shrug:: As soon as I started prepping the walls for paint, I realized that I had a problem. Not only was the existing paint ugly, it was also cheap, and I was going to have to prime the walls. Blurgh. The problem with a small space like this laundry room is that is has SO MUCH brush work and so little surface area to roll. But it had to be done, so I spent all day prepping & priming. My favorite primer is Kilz, but it is VERY noxious, so I called it quits and cracked open a White Claw at about 5:00 pm. Saturday end of day: so. much. cutting in.

Sunday morning, I was back at it! I painted the walls my FAVORITE neutral, Sherwin Williams Oyster White. You can find 1,000,000 interior designer reviews about it, but my opinion is that Oyster White leans a tiny bit olive-y, which makes it more modern than a traditional cream color, but still warm and cozy. For all the interior walls in our home, we use Valspar Ultra in a Satin finish. I also put two coats of paint on the cabinet boxes in SW Snowbound. Snowbound is white without being white. Does that make sense? All our cabinetry is Valspar Ultra Semi-Gloss.

[Snowbound is a better white than Benjamin Moore Chantilly Lace. I said what I said.] My in-laws came over for dinner Sunday, so I knocked off early. Here we are at the end of Sunday. Notice how my "weekend project" isn't done?

Raise your hand if your DIY projects always take longer than you think they will. Raise your other hand if you never finish those final steps... 🙌 Let's work on that together!

I was able to get back to the laundry room makeover on Tuesday. I loaded all the goodies back in the cabinets and started strategizing about the visible storage I knew I wanted on the open shelf. I'll talk storage at the very end of this post! Tuesday midday:

Meanwhile, my husband had refaced the cabinet doors and I painted them. We did the same thing on all our kitchen cabinets, and the difference is AMAZING. I'll share more on that process in my kitchen makeover post at some point. We put the doors back up (always a team project to avoid paint scratches) and waited for our hardware to come in. Five days after I started my "weekend project," the hard parts were done-ish! Nevermind the fact that we had yet to install child cabinet locks, which was the whole impetus of this project in the first place. If you look super closely, you will see that I painted the old yellowing dryer door handle with spray Kilz so it would be white. 😬

Our hardware came in a couple days later, so I put those up. These bar pulls are super affordable!

After a week of work, this is how the laundry room stayed for a couple weeks until I made time to go basket & décor hunting. The BEST place to find small baskets and décor is Five Below. I found these three cute baskets and a fake succulent. Normally I don't do fake plants, but this laundry room is dark and the last thing I need to be reminded of when I'm doing laundry is trying to take care of another living thing.

Beautiful, right? My husband installed the child locks, and we called it done! I knew I wanted a sign, but I couldn't find anything that I liked so I put it on the back burner. . . . . . FOR A WHOLE YEAR.

Whoops! I started this laundry room makeover a year ago this month and just took the time to find the right sign *last week.* Sometime between then and now, I also added hooks to each side of the room and hangers for the few air-dry clothes we have. My husband added another light fixture in the laundry room as well... I can now see whether my stains came out in the wash! Full disclosure: I only nailed down my sign search because I wanted to be able to write this blog post. I found this one on Etsy. Still, what a gift to myself to have a completed space! Here is the beautiful, 100% finished space I have for my laundry:

Storage breakdown: Above cabinet: paper towels, soft- sided cooler, basket of off-brand magic erasers: you're welcome.

Inside cabinets: medicines, cleaning products

Baskets on shelf: extra dryer balls, clothespins, laundry bags Left of dryer: stepstool, grabby thing Right of washer: folding table, husband's work computer with cords into his workspace in the garage Here is a slideshow of the progress:

Total cost of this project was very affordable. I already had all the necessary tools and boring things like wall putty and sand paper. I purchased primer, paint, hardware, and some MDF for the cabinet refacing. I had a spare sheet of 1/4" plywood that I used as a cabinet topper to make the top of the cabinets functional storage space. I also purchased all the decorative elements. I hope you are inspired to tackle a project on your next free "weekend." And I hope you NEVER have to prime a room with so many nooks & crannies. Or, if you want help with your laundry space, you can reach out to me here.

Cheers! - Handy Caitie

Laundry before and after