Sunday, April 17, 2011

Dirty Laundry...

Unfortunately, laundries are a necessary evil if you are concerned with wearing clean clothes (which I am)... but laundries rarely look any good.  Because its just a laundry, right?  If you had a choice of spending money on something more visible in your house, or in the laundry which only you see - well, a more visible room is always going to win isn't it!

Still... for some years, I have been dreaming of a light, airy, pretty laundry where I will wash the clothes for my family, bathed in sunlight, a fresh vase of flowers lightly scenting the air around me, gazing dreamily out into the garden through the old white sash window.....  Are you sharing my vision?  Or am I just weird?!  Let me give you a visual so you can get up to speed here - this particular laundry is the one I have been drooling over for years, it appeared in 2007 in (the now defunct) Notebook magazine... so dreamy :)  I love the Butler's sink and the light in this room.







Are you feeling it yet?  Well in order to really drive my point home, I went in search of more dreamy laundries for you and found the ones below on the Great Interior Design blog website under Best Laundry Room Design.  I came across this blog while googling for Laundry images, but I think I'll be a frequent visitor - the blogger in chief, Herman, has put together a great collection of inspirational images!  You can click on the links to read all his comments about these laundries and see more :)

These were the ones I particularly liked from the selection on offer - this one has an interior window for light


Photographer: Michael Graydon  Room Designer:  William MacDonald

This one is very cute with its little floral sink skirt! :)


Photographer:  Mark Burstyn

Can you believe this is actually the same laundry as the one above?  I love how functional it is!


Photographer:  Mark Burstyn

And I think this one has overtaken the Notebook mag one as my new personal favourite!  I have a sudden urge to paint my laundry blue... Lol























Photographer:  Donna Griffith

And this now brings me to my laundry... which is very sad!  It is tiny, dark, uninspiring and MESSY!!!  I have never been what one would call a natural homemaker... I'm am, by nature, a very messy person!  But in recent years I have worked very hard to be tidier - I have figured out that for me, messy house = messy mind.  I cannot focus when I have mess all around anymore.  And so I do make much more of an effort to keep things tidy...  and fortunately for me, Boofy is the type of person who gets in and gets things done, so he does a lot around the house too.  We also have the help of the wonderful Nat, who comes in and cleans for us on a regular basis - this is great for three reasons:  One, we don't have to spend our precious weekends cleaning and can focus on Alex instead - and Two: we have to make sure that everything is tidied and put away before Nat comes so she can get in and clean, so it keeps us tidy in between cleans - and Three: Nat is amazing and there is nothing better than walking into the house after a hard week to see the fruits of her labour - everything shiny and gleaming, the whole house smelling (and looking) lovely and clean :)

HOWEVER!  The laundry is our dumping ground for everything, as nobody but us ever goes in there... whenever we tidy the house in a hurry and something doesn't have a home, this is where it goes.  Couple with this the fact that we've all been sick, and consequently washing has not been the top priority (thank God our wardrobes and linen cupboard are full to bursting, so we still have clean clothes to wear and clean sheets and towels!)  Our laundry is a disaster... I'm really ashamed to post these photos (people who knew me before I started taking more pride in my surroundings will just be thinking a leopard never changes its spots! Lol) but when I walked into the laundry and saw this incredible mess this morning, something just snapped!  The rest of the house looks so nice, then I walk into the laundry to do a load of washing - and where the hell do I start??  Yikes!  Here goes.... I feel like I'm walking into the confessional here...







































I know, its soooo bad isn't it :(  Especially after the beautiful images above.

I should back up and explain a bit about what we've already done in the laundry.  I don't have any before photos, but when we moved in it had lino tiles stuck on half the floor (yes, only half!), and they were impossible to pry up.  So we went to Bunnings and bought this bamboo floor lookalike lino - I cut it out and laid it myself right over the old tiles... not the most professional job, but it is the laundry after all, so we were pretty happy.  We also bought those two tall broom cupboards and two smaller cupboards - the tall ones are for the vacuum cleaner, stroller, ironing board, iron and cleaning products we need to keep high up.  The lower ones actually have divided washing hampers in them, so laundry is (supposedly!) sorted into colours and put down there ready to be washed - and the top provides a bench of sorts.

Anyway, I have been sick all week but got myself a burst of energy this morning (finally!  I've been waiting all week!)  so I rolled up my sleeves, got in and cleaned the whole thing up, sorted the washing, and prettied things up a bit.  And my laundry now looks like normal people live here (as opposed to filthy hoarders) - yay!!!  It is still not the light airy laundry with vast bench spaces that I really want, but at least its clean and a little nicer to be in... and as it turns out I've spent almost the whole day in there, we had a lot of washing to get through but I was really motivated and have caught it all up!  All the clothes were hung on portable lines inside with the ceiling fans on full - and we took 3 loads of sheets and towels to the laundromat to dry (we don't have a dryer at home - they chew the power and if we actually had one I'd use it far more than necessary out of laziness!  I'm not to be trusted!! Lol)

In terms of what I did to make it a bit more pleasant - I got this canvas I had hanging around in the garage, and some scrapbook paper and stick on letters from my (extensive) scrapbooking arsenal :)  I just trimmed and stuck the papers on and then added the 'LAUNDRY' letters onto it... I know its stating the obvious and not the best artwork, but it was 100% free, so I can live with it!  I am also very lucky that Boofy dutifully trotted on down to Aldi on Thursday and got me some pretty little laundry tins that they had on sale this week - sweet!  And of course, added one of my beloved fake Ikea plants (in lieu of the obligatory bunch of flowers in my dream laundries above).  Is there a place I wouldn't put a fake Ikea plant?  The answer is no my friends, no...  tragic I know... its an illness!! Lol

So here it is:










































What do you think?  Well anything is going to be an improvement, but I'm pretty happy.  I need a bit more colour on the other side where my 'bench' is - I've seen the perfect runner on sale at Pillow Talk (hopefully they still have it) and I have a very large artwork in the garage that no longer suits our decor in the rest of the house, so I will probably add both of those sometime soon.  But for now, this will do :)

And while we're on the subject of great laundries, check out these photos that my friend Faith recently posted on Facebook - she has a funky new benchtop going on in her laundry which she loves... (its actually quite a similar look to the flooring I would have chosen if we could afford it, albeit in a different colour).


But check out this amazing view out the window!!!  I think I would never get any laundry done at all if I had this view to gaze out at!!




































What a lucky ducky Faith is to have that view every single day :) 

And now that I've had my burst of energy and a productive day (although I didn't do all the work - Boofy featured heavily!) I am feeling a little tired and unenergetic again.... oh well, at least I managed to get something done!

Bye for now :)

2 comments:

  1. I LOVE Before and After pics! Your Laundry room is lovely! What a transformation.
    I enjoyed looking at those beautiful pictures of the magazine laundry rooms, but couldn't help but wonder how long it would take my kids to turn the white walls and counters and sinks every color of the rainbow with paint and mud and kid sticky.
    LOL
    Thanks for stopping by my blog as well!
    ~Michelle

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  2. Thanks for the comments Michelle :) Yes I know what you mean... although in my case I think it would be my husband who would be the culprit in messing it all up ;)
    Krispy

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