"It's In The Laundry Room..."

A frequent response at our house, to almost any question that began with "where is...?", was: "in the laundry room". Over the years our laundry room became a repository for all manner of things. Well, as so often happens, the contents of this room reached a tipping point at the same time I reached a breaking point; enough was enough! I pulled everything out  of the room (except the washer and the dryer!) and emptied the drawers and cabinets, nothing was spared. Planters, vases, batteries, plant food, rags-- you name it; if it wasn't in some way related to laundry it wasn't staying anymore! Oh, and then there were the light bulbs. Yes, lightbulbs! Don't even get me started on the subject of light bulbs. Take a look at all of the light bulbs that were hiding in the laundry room, stashed and shoved everywhere in there. There was a time when buying and replacing a light bulb was easy, they were incandescent. You simply went to the store and bought one; whatever wattage you needed, that was the only differentiating feature. Then came the CFLs. Okay, they used less energy and they took a while to come to full illuminating strength, but other than that, (once you learned the wattage conversion) it was okay. The biggest problem I had with the CFLs was the variance in color produced, sometimes it was a white-white and sometimes a yellow-white but I learned. We have an abundance of recessed cans requiring flood lights in our ceilings, in straight lines, and if one flood was replaced it almost had to be the same color or it looked wrong. We spent a lot of time replacing entire rows of flood lights to rectify that situation.

And now, here we are again: gone are the CFLs and in come the LEDs. I don't like the light they throw off, to me it's simply too glaring and harsh. It seems too industrial and not at all home-y.  I understand, once again, the energy savings... but, please. Mr. Goodneedle replaced the flourescent tubes in his workshop with LEDs a few weeks ago. He can do microsurgery down there now. 😲 Yeah, light bulbs. I don't know when this light bulb dilemma will conclude but they won't be residing any longer in the laundry room! See, I said "don't get me started on the subject of light bulbs".

As the cabinets were emptied, bags were filled. Vases and planters to Goodwill. Outdated cleaning products, chemicals and junk went to the trash. See this? Spray starch from when we lived overseas, I had two brand-new cans of this-- the problem with it is that we moved from Europe in June of 1999! I am doubting that eighteen+ year-old spray starch would still be good. Or what it might deposit on fabric. Gone. Why had I kept it?

Before too long the laundry room became not only neat, but well-organized and welcoming; stepping inside was a joy and doing laundry was no longer met with dread. All of that accumulated junk had been weighing on me. I had wanted, for some time, to have a pull-down, wall-mounted, drying rack for items that don't go into the dryer. I had saved a few photos on Pinterest and mentioned this idea to Mr. Goodneedle, presenting him with my visual aids.

He set to work and went one better. This rack is spacious, easy to lower and raise and leaves plenty of clearance below when entering or exiting through the laundry room door when it's in use.

I couldn't be happier with the solutions encountered from simply cleaning out laundry room central. Now, as for those stashed and amassed light bulbs; we might have to go hunting for those next time!

💡

Life is Good!