I found a new to me blog that I’m crazy about.    It’s called Home and Harmony and it’s about a mother with 6 children, who homeschools and decorates and sings :). Click on her family photo to go there:

She is what I would like to be someday. 
She posted photos about her dining room (and brand new pictures of her laundry room which you have to go see.)

I have a lot of people to sit in a tiny area and when I saw her photo, I fell in love with her bench.  You see it has a soft back that can be pushed up against the window and no one will feel the lumps from the window sill.  And since it is a bench, you can squish several little bodies on it.

I told my mom all about it and showed her pictures and spent the afternoon with her searching the internet for such a thing, but found nothing.  My mom kept my 3 oldest children last night for a sleepover and took them garage saling this morning.  She called me from a garage sale and said they had a bench there for $5 that fit my measurements, but she wasn’t sure if I would want it.  It was $5 so I told her to buy it.

She said, “Are you sure?  I don’t know if you’ll like it.”  For $5 I’ll risk it.  This is what she brought me:

I love it!

My cousin, Eric, is coming over tonight to lay new tile in my laundry room.  I’m so excited!  I use the term laundry room loosely, as ours is just a 3 x 10 foot closet.    When we move If we move, I will look for a laundry room that has folding and sorting space.  For now I am grateful that it is on the main floor.  Anyway, my laundry room has always been a mess.

I didn’t think it mattered that the top of the cupboared was all junky or that the shelves were shoved full of stuff I never used. 

After we started our house remodel and have been living in chaos for 6 weeks and counting, I realized that environment affects me.  I’m cranky; I can’t think, the children are running around crazy; and It’s getting harder to be productive.  I’ve decided while I can, to take every little nook and cranny of my home and make it better.

I’m not an interior designer (in case you were confused, bwahahaha) and I know what I do won’t be perfect.  I’m okay with that.

The first thing I did was take everything out of the cupboards and wash them down.  Then I thought about what I really used.  I set those items aside and got rid of the rest.  Some I was able to find new homes for where they would be loved and cherished.  Some were worth trashing and other things hit the garage sale pile. 

While I was decluttering I also removed a shelf from each cabinet.  With 3 shelves, they were too short to be of much use.  The strong boards are going to be perfect for towel storage in another room.

Then I took a vinyl table cloth that I loved and cut it up as shelf liner.  I used elmer’s spray adhesive to adhere the vinyl and wrapped it all the way around the shelf.  This allows me to flip the shelf over and hides all of the original brown.  I love the pale yellow with white polka dots.  It’s so cheerful!  And I love that I can wipe it down when I need to.  My first plan was to use wallpaper, but that was waaaay to expensive.  My next idea was to use fabric with decopauge and sealer to make it washable.  That was going to be a LOT of work.  My genious mother thought of the table cloth.  Mine was on my table (convenient) but a new one is just $5.

The cabinet doors were too dark and heavy feeling.  I thought about washing the cabinets in a pale aqua blue, but I wasn’t sure I would love it and I’m  tired of painting!  So I took the doors off and used glue dots to stick a lovely daisy lace trim around the door frame.  The lace hid the router holes from the old hinges.  Update:  The glue dots didn’t hold.  I ended up using spray glue for the lace too.

There are cabinets on each end of the room.  One over the washer and one over the dryer.  The washer side will stay open. And I’ve sewn a cute little yellow and tiny dot curtain for the other side from the fabric I had orginally cut for shelf liner.  I’m going to find a tension rod today so I can show it to you.  (I’m not loving the curtain look in here.  Maybe it’s not full enough, or not long enough, or just too bright a fabric.  How would you fix it if it were you?)

I invested $25 in a huge new basket ($4–price slashed because the cover was damaged, but I can sew!) for our BBQ tools that will sit on top of the dryer cabinet; $5 each for 3 gallon size glass penny candy jars for baking soda, borax, and oxygen bleach, and $5 for a lime green tea jar for liquid laundry soap. 

I also used the leftover beadboard wall-paper from the girls’ room to wall-paper the entire room and the backs of the cabinets.  It makes me so happy whenI look in there from the other room.  I plan to leave off the doors to the laundry closet and sew a curtain instead that matches the blinds I hope to make for the kitchen.

Here’s an after photo, more pictures to come: