William Morris Thursday - the laundry room closet

It's Thursday and that can only mean one thing around here - I've been busy! I've linked up with Jules again for her William Morris project and it's been so much fun! You should totally pick a project and join us!

Last Thursday, I told you that a friend of mine was coming to help me with whatever project I wanted to work on. I decided to start with my laundry room closet because the floor was covered with stuff and it was not even coming close to living up to its potential. And, when you have a house full of stuff you want to get rid of and your friend's coming to help you with it, you just pick something.

When we built this house almost 7 years ago, I wanted lots of storage. My mother-in-law instilled it in me. Build lots of closets and cabinets and drawers and you'll fill them all up and you won't regret it! Or something like that. She was right about the filling them up part. I've done that pretty well. Off of my kitchen, I have a large laundry room that I imagined the morning light pouring into as I cheerily folded towels and hung shirts. I'll talk about that reality another time.

In the laundry room, I have small closet with a large set of shelves to house things that I wanted to have access to, but wouldn't need very often. This laundry room closet began as a place to store leftover paint we used for our house and extra tiles and wood from our flooring. Then, we added things that we didn't want to lug out to our backyard storage building, and eventually, things that we just chunked in there like wrapping paper, fireworks and art supplies.

The bottom two shelves were filled with paint cans, some near full and some almost empty. Thankfully, our town has a recycling center where you can drop off old paint. If it's still good, someone will take it. If it's past its prime, it's disposed of properly. I think we loaded up about 10 cans.

There was no rhyme or reason to the stuff that ended up on these shelves. I remember being somewhat organized with it at some point in the past, but who knows what's happened since.

A whole lot of shoving and piling is what appears to have happened. Just look at that Jack-o-lantern laughing at my plight.

On Thursday, my friend came ready for work. We brewed a pot of coffee and got started. We pulled everything out and separated into giveaway, trash, my stuff and Mr. Park's stuff. Then we made a list of things that need to happen before next week. The purpose of the list was, of course, to keep me on task and help me think through some of the stuff I keep storing and moving, but not ever using.

My list:

1. frame chicken print (For years I have intended to have it framed and put on the wall. And yet, it was at the bottom of the pile pictured above.)
2. put bulletin boards in girl's room (Same thing. I wanted to fix them up cute and hang them in my girls' room. Bottom of pile.)
3. get desk from Goodwill
4. take yellow desk to mom's house (It's in my bedroom and I'm not working on my bedroom right now. Duh.)
5. buy paint for laundry room closet (I have no idea what color I want that closet to be.)
6. have a hole cut and install a spigot in big jar (see below)

Okay, so maybe the list thing didn't work out. I only crossed one thing off my list and the only reason I got that one done was because it involved Goodwill and buying something at Goodwill. But the purpose of the list was served even though I didn't accomplish all the items this past week. If I wanted to keep something, I had to have a plan for it. And that gives me something to work toward.

For example, this gigantic old jar. My friend Brenda, the one who so generously came to help me, gave me this jar after she did a major clean out in her house. I thought it would make the perfect sangria dispenser for summer get-togethers. If only I could get someone to drill a hole in the glass so I could attach a spigot. When we came across it in the closet, she asked me why it was in there. I told her that I wanted to have someone put a hole in it for a spigot but I was afraid it would break in the process so I never had it done. She kindly reminded me that I hadn't used it one time since she gave it to me so if it broke, I wouldn't have lost anything. Yeah, I know, she's a pretty good friend to have around.

This is the stuff I removed that belongs to Mr. Park. His assignment was to go through it, get rid of the stuff he doesn't want and organize the stuff he does. I'll take it from there. Here's another example of the wisdom of my friend Brenda. I asked her where in the heck I should put the broken ice maker from our fridge and she said to put it in Mr. Park's pile and let him deal with it. Again, brilliant!

This is the stuff that still needs to be taken out to the storage shed. (I'm sure the reason this task wasn't done has something to do with the storage shed needing to be cleaned out.) #dominoeffect

We hauled out two big bags of trash.

And filled Brenda's little Mini Cooper with recyclables and giveaway stuff.


Oh, yeah, here's how that closet looks now. Some of it stills looks the same, but everything was touched and it's usefulness considered. Not finished by any means, but ready for some organization and decoration. Did you notice you can see the floor now?!?

Mucho thanks to Brenda who'll be here in a few hours to help me take a bite out of this beautiful mess...

P.S. I'll blow that picture up when I have an 'after' picture to go next to it. ;)

What are you working on?