Before & After: Laundry Room Closet

Good morning!  If you enjoy before and afters as much as I do, then this post is for you.

On my list of home resolutions for this year was to organize and "pretty up" my laundry room closet.  I have a cute little laundry closet upstairs (sidebar: having laundry on the second floor of a home is life changing and I am forever spoiled).  The closet needed a little work.  Here's the before:

The first thing I did was pull everything out.  I really like to start with a completely blank slate.

I moved my swim bag (the blue and white striped bag in the first photo) to my bedroom closet.  Then I did some thinking about what I wanted to put back on the shelves.  I thought it made the most sense to keep my bedroom sheets and extra towels up there.  I wanted baskets to hide them and to keep them, and the closet, looking nice and neat and impossibly orderly.  So I measured the shelves and figured out how big the baskets needed to be and put the measurements in my phone.  I keep a small tape measure in my weekend purse because you never know when you will need it.  Jamie and I were at the Christmas Tree Shops in Lancaster when we hit the outlets recently. I found these baskets there.  They were the absolute perfect size (I knew this because I had my little tape measure) and they were marked $12.99, which seemed like a steal.  Little did I know they were an additional 50% off.  They were $6.50 each!  Excuse me while I go ALL CAPS on you:  THREE BIG BASKETS WERE UNDER $20 TOTAL.

The baskets are super nice too.  Well made and sturdy.  I paid less for all three than most other places were charging for one.  Bargain!  Anyway, I moved the iron to the lower shelf and bought a little glass jar from Target to hold these nifty clothespin-hooks that I use all of the time to dry my bathing suits.  

Obviously I had to keep the laundry stuff there: the detergents, stain removal stuff, iron, bleach.   I keep my detergents on a tray, and I found the gold one on the top shelf at Target last year on clearance.  I found another gold tray on clearance at Home Goods.  It was scratched on the tray part, so it was on sale for something like $7.  But I snatched it up because I knew you'd never see the actual tray. I liked that it matched the other gold tray I had.  It lives on the bottom shelf and holds my other laundry necessities.

Here's the closet all neat and tidy!  Oh, I also took the ugly stickers off the washing machine (notice the yellow sticker on the front and the red and white sticker on top are gone).  That alone made a nice difference.

As for what is left, my initial plan was to paint the space a pale blue, Rainwashed (Sherwin Williams), which I have on hand.  But the more I think about it, the less inclined I am do so.  I think this is a good opportunity to challenge myself to do something with white walls, since I am renting after all.  Most renters cannot paint, and while I think my landlord would have been cool with a soft blue laundry closet, I am going to try my hand at white.  The laundry room is a drab, ugly stained off-white.  So I may bust out my Sherwin Williams Alabaster and give it a fresh coat of paint.  Beyond that, I am unsure.  I may hang some art, I may do a stripe on the wall (that I can paint over when I leave).  We will see.   But for now, this space makes me happy the way it is.

See you swoon,