Spring Cleaning - Laundry Room

I don't know why but whenever I start cleaning our house I ALWAYS start with the laundry room.  It's probably the most inconspicuous room in the house so I don't really understand my logic but I guess it just feels good to have the room that holds everything that's dirty, namely clothes, clean.  So of course that's where I began my spring cleaning.  This year spring cleaning has become not only that but also, get-our-house-ready-to-be-bought time.  That means that every room I clean, I make sure light bulbs are all working, if there are any paint touch-ups that need to happen happen, etc...  Oh yeah, and I'm purging too.  Meet Mr. Tupperware:

I'm carrying him from room to room and filling him with things in said room that don't belong anymore...a.k.a. stuff we haven't used in a long time, don't need anymore, whatever will make life a little less cluttered.  :)

So, yes, the laundry room.  Since garages aren't popular down here in the South, our tools and such are stored in our laundry room.  Lucky for us, our laundry room is big, measuring 8.5' by 8', so one whole wall is dedicated to tools, drying racks, paint stuff, recyclables, and other things.

To begin my cleaning process (cause y'all know it's a process, especially "spring cleaning"...they don't give it a name for nothin') I started with the elephant in the room (to me anyway) - our one and only junk drawer.  I loathe junk drawers and I hate that we have one.  My philosophy is that everything has a place, and if not, give it away.  Well, here it is:

Ugh!  It's mainly screws, bolts, and lots of other DIY knick-knacks but it drives me bonkers!  How we even find what we need to DIY is beyond me!

Well, thankfully, a trip to the dollar store for $2 worth of little storage bins solved our junk drawer crisis. 

See?  Much better.  I can sleep easier at night...

A little bit of sorting and cleaning later and our entire drawer system was organized.

I love being organized!  And yes, that whole drawer on the bottom right is spray paint.  It's an ask-Santa-for-it thing for me.  :) 

Look!  I even punched and hung our ever-growing collection of paint swatches on a handy dandy ring!

If you're thinking by now that I might be a little obsessive...you're right!  It runs in my family.  (By the way, all this cleaning jazz is coming from the girl who used to stuff clothes, shoes, and anything else in the way of not getting to go to a sleepover, under her bed, dressers, and night stands...my how the tables have turned.  I guess sitting in the "ucky basement" proved to be a worthy punishment Rock.)

On I moved to the dryer.  I love our dryer but for some reason, the lint filter isn't the best little lint filter in the world.  So, every 6 months or so I get out the shop vac and suck up what's not been captured.  Horror stories about dryer lint catching fire have brought me to this.

On a side note:  As I was unscrewing the plastic piece that holds the filter in place, I had the radio on in the other room, and if you know me, you know I love singing.  So I was singing with the radio with my head, arms, and shoulders all inside the dryer and let me tell you - with the steel drum it's like I had my own recording studio.  The sound is awesome in there!  There's a perfect echo and great surround sound!  Get a mic and a dryer and you don't even need to go anywhere to record!

So anyway, that's the extent of my cleaning so far.  The entire room is spotless - baseboards, cupboards, ex-junk drawer, you name it.  Now I move on to washing the one window on the door, inside and out, fixing an 'oops' drop of water on wet paint I committed on the inside of the door, and getting out a tiny rust spot on the outside...by the way, anyone know how to do that?  Oh, and here's what Mr. Tupperware came away with:

New grass fertilizer, a bunch of rags (we have tons), old drawer pulls, and parts for window screens.  After a trip to ReStore, even he'll be all clean!

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Anyone else spring cleaning?  Anyone else not get up the motivation yet?  You can clean along with me and then tell me about it!  I know it's sounds daunting and boring but writing about it makes it so much more fun!  After I finish the door (which I'll tell y'all about after I've solved our tiny rust problem), I'm moving on to our kitchen.  Get those rubber gloves on ladies (and gents...Crappa and Booguy) and get your clean on!  :) 

On A Pedestal

Last year we saved up enough money to buy ourselves a new high-efficiency washer and dryer.  So, we did a bunch of research on which brands and options were the best for us - keeping our budget in mind, of course.  And since getting a deal is an obligation in this family, we store-shopped until we found the best price.  We ended up buying two Frigidaire beauties at Sears who price-matched a lower price found at another store, plus gave us an extra 10% off the difference.  (We love supporting Sears because of all the material love they give to families in need on Extreme Home Makeover.) 

Everything was great until we started looking at a couple of pedestals to add to the bunch.  Okay...$400 for two metal boxes with a drawer...I don't think so.  If we had the money in our budget...maybe.  But, we didn't.  However, we were told by an unnamed person (the great salesman) that it's pretty easy to build your own if you can't afford to shell out the cash for the pre-made ones.  With the D.I.Y. bell ringing in our ears, we stashed that idea into our brains for later use and made off with our new cleaning machines.  Well it's later and we haven't had the time to build our pedestals yet but I thought I'd write about doing it anyway in case anyone out there wants to try it.  

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This instructables.com web page gives pretty detailed instructions on how to build two pedestals.  They're open in the front but with a drawer hardware kit and some more lumber, you'd probably be able to put in a drawer pretty easily.  You could also buy a small tension rod and snazzy up your laundry room with a little custom-made curtain to cover the opening.  Of course, you really wouldn't need anything at all and it could just be left open.  Whatever floats your boat!

This eHow article also gives some instructions but with less pictures.

Click here if you're a visual person and you'd like to see a video at www.washerdryerpedestal.net on how to make a pedestal.

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If you've found another way to put your machines up on pedestals, let us know!  Once we get to that project (a.k.a. once Anthony is done studying for his Masters') we'd love to have ideas on how to make ours from experienced pedestal builders!

(P.S. If you want a little chuckle and a lesson, read about my detergent deluge.)