A Mini Laundry Room Update...

I love the fact that my laundry room is upstairs, and for once, we have a true laundry ROOM (albeit a small one).  In the past homes, we've had a laundry closet (apartment), two laundry areas in the basement, and a laundry/mudroom-that-was-so-small-you-could-barely-open-the-front-doors.  This at least has a door that can swing the whole way open and is solely a laundry room... no other purposes.

I have a long way to go to really fix up this room, but my first goal was to straighten up the mess of detergents.  Remember that we began using Shaklee products?  Well, almost completely... still trying to use up some of our older products.  Here's one of them...

I do NOT get this design.  I understand that it can be poured and/or squirted out (if tilted sideways), right?  The sucker is so heavy, that pouring is hard, and even when I do, this is the mess that ensues.

Yuck.

And then it drips all over my machines.

Double yuck.  

I have no other tables or shelves in the room, other than the builder-installed wire shelf above the sink (so high I can barely reach it!)

If you use the squirting side where you push the button, it leaks... on whatever is below... and on itself if you straighten the bottle upright.

Again, yuck.

 After falling in love with the design of the Shaklee bottles... love the pump!...

 I decided to get another similar one to use for the other detergent.  I bought this on eBay.  It wasn't cheap (like $10ish), but I figure I'll use it later for any special detergents we need to get for my sensitive-skin daughter.  For now, it helps me use the other detergent without a huge mess.

Now we had four tall skinny bottles of detergent and it was hogging up all the space on my dryer.  So, I found a small skinny crate at Joann's.  After painting and adding a few details, we now have this....

I added some paper as an afterthought, to match the following craft.

I had read about halving your dryer sheets to make the box last longer.  Only, instead of returning them to the same box, I decided to pretty it up a little.  These are the supplies I used:

An empty plastic jar (these held pistachios) with a screw-on lid

twine

cute paper

glue (in this case, a glue stick was what was easily available!)

I cut the paper to cover the current label.  (The label wasn't coming off easily, so rather than play around with Goo-Gone, I just covered it up!)  I made sure to also cover up the "Best by..." stamped letters.

 Here is the papered version so far.

I wanted to pretty up the plastic lid just a little.  In order to make a perfect circle to fit inside the jar, I just used my fingernail to emboss the paper on its inner circle rim.

Then I cut out the circle, and glued it.

Then because it needed just a little more, I added a twine bow around the middle and eventually added a mini chalkboard label.

Next, I took a box of dryer sheets.

I grabbed a handful at a time and cut them in half with scissors.

The entire box of 80 sheets, cut in half (160 total... see I told you I was a Math major)... fit inside the jar!

Oh how cute... excuse the lack of label in this photo.  The label was an afterthought when I went rummaging through my craft-supply pile and found it.

Here is my dryer sheet jar... at the right height for the 10 and 11 year olds to reach!  Right on the dryer!

I also installed the little crate shelf at the perfect height too.  This may not be the perfect spot, but for now it works.  I refuse to paint anymore rooms for awhile.  I just heard that when the final walkthrough/fix-it date occurs, they'll be caulking a lot... and the builder will not use our paint color choices for touch-ups.  I already have 10 rooms I'll need to retouch... I don't need anymore right now!

We taught our kids how to do laundry this winter.  (The older two... no doubt the younger ones would break the machines... somehow!)  I haven't gotten into a habit of making them do it, but now they no longer are allowed to blame me for still-dirty clothes.  THEY can do it!  :)  And for the record, they do not separate clothes.  The only thing I require them to remove from the others are dark, new clothes.  It may not be Martha Stewart's suggestion, but for a 10 year old, it works just fine.