We moved into our home nearly two years ago and some rooms just didn’t get the love they deserved. In fact, I feel like all of our rooms could use a little tszujing at this point. Where I am a nut and would love to take on all the rooms at once, clean sweep the house and walk into a fresh new place; that just isn’t possible. Instead I made a list of rooms I want to tackle (please note all of them made the list), prioritized my tasks, rooms and desires and jumped in with both feet ready for change.

I started with our laundry room because it is my space and was easily updated with a splash of paint (I did that), hardware changes and the implementation of an organization system.

This space is my domain. However, when we moved in it was not my primary focus because it is only my space and I would get to it someday. Two years later it is the space I started with. Small spaces equal easy to tackle with a low budget, one surely gets more bang for their buck when starting here. Small spaces can also be quick turnaround spaces, therefore creating motivation and intrinsic satisfaction.

The original plan was create a beachy escape. A place to always catch good vibes. The more I sat with the design in my head, the more uncertain I became. I intended to wallpaper the whole room with palm frond wallpaper in a slate / jade green with a pink background, but every time I passed the open door I realized that the wallpaper would be just too much. I explored it from every angle and also came to the conclusion that it would be simply cost prohibitive.

With that in mind, the plan took a slight turn and got simplified to include paint rather than wallpaper. Paint would allow me to create an impactful design on a low budget while also giving me the freedom of change easily.

The plan – change out the hardware, clean out the clutter, implement an organization system, paint the walls fun and whimsically and change out one light for a pendant. Simple and easy to pull together in a weekend if so desired. Also, very budget friendly. This room cost us less than $1,000 coming in at a cost of $880.

Without further ado, let me tell you about the changes made…

A change of hardware was a big deal to me. I dislike the majority of the hardware and lighting our home originally came with and wanted to make a small but mighty impact immediately. I converted all the lower cabinets to Liberty Champagne Bronze Drawer Pulls and converted all of the upper cabinets to Liberty Champagne Bronze Knobs. This small change made such a big impact.

I wanted to find a pendant that brought the room to life and added impact as one could see into the laundry room from other rooms in our home. Without fail West Elm came through. As it is known if you’ve been following the blog for a while, we are mid-mod lovers. West Elm’s Sculptural Glass Faceted Pendant was just what I was looking for. Small enough to not over take the space, but impactful enough to create interest and joy.

An essential for our laundry room was implementing an organization system.

The key for me was to maximize all cabinets to their full potential (later in this post I will share photos of the clutter and chaos that was). I’ve been using this room for two years, therefore I already had designated spaces for much of what I use and access readily. When we moved in I immediately added a drying rod (hello hang drying most of my clothing) and it connected to a cabinet that simply didn’t have a purpose. I started by defining cabinet purposes and spaces and working to bring each to organized life.

The Container Store is my and the Doodle’s favorite place to shop and get lost and as you can imagine, this is where most of my budget was spent.

For the cabinet that is nestled next to the hang drying rod, I wanted to give it purpose. This cabinet now contains hangers. Our white plastic hang drying hangers are accessible and all of our excess Joy closet hangers are stored there too. I used two large white tapered storage bins and labeled them accordingly. Easy way to make an odd space come to life and create purpose.

All of our uppers are used for household needs (light bulbs, dusting supplies, odds & ends such as felt furniture protectors, batteries, etc.). They also store all laundry needs (detergent, dryer sheets, bleach, anything to mend clothing and remove wrinkles). These spaces needed organization to wrangle all the tiny bits and pieces. I used both small and medium white plastic storage bins to create cohesive storage. I like how the cutout top allows for quick visibility and accessibility.

We also have one little lonely cabinet over our laundry room sink where I store extra bins, our wood floor oil and utilize magazine holders to organize essential home materials. Simple yet tidy.

For our lowers it was much more important to me to create storage that was easy to access. No crouching or digging into these bigger cabinets. I also realized for us, this is where we stored items we don’t access nearly as often. Overflow of kitchen towels, linens we use infrequently, a collection of rain gear easily found but not often used, our outdoor trash bags, plastic bags we use as mini trash can liners or to clean up after our dogs and our outdoor fire place fire starters. Basically, only once in a while items.

I wanted to add drawers to these spaces for access and visibility. I utilized a variety of sizes of the white cabinet-sized elfa mesh drawers. These were easy for me to install on my own and truly streamlined the spaces. Cabinets that we originally just threw items in now had purpose.

I included a Tosca Hamper behind our laundry room door to throw all our dry cleaner clothes into. I will be adding a second in the very near future to collect towels and wet laundry so that it doesn’t sit in hampers in rooms.

Other little details I added to tidy up the space and add interest at first sight included a frame to make me smile, an aloe plant to bring in nature, canisters to control chaos, an oil diffuser because – dirty laundry, a wall shelf to store our handheld Dyson and a gold pineapple wall rack to nod to the original beach theme and hang our dry mops, swifter and fly swatters from. It’s truly the simple little joys.

It’s time y’all, it is now time to show you what I started with… I truly believe we all have space we turn into dump zones and we all have a cupboard or drawer we avoid. This room was that space for me. I was always waiting for someday to clean up and create a space that made me feel good. Before someday became today for me, this is what we were wading through anytime we needed something housed in our laundry room.

It was chaos, chaos I tell ya! I don’t want to leave you with chaos though and I haven’t mentioned the paint job… There’s just a bit more to share…

As I mentioned, I moved away from wallpaper for financial and ease of change reasons, but found an incredible alternative in painting the geo triangles throughout the two primary walls. As I often do, I was searching Pinterest for inspiration and came upon a pin that provided DYI geometric feature wall instructions and I was immediately enamored. I chose to stick with the beach color palette that inspired me and used a selection of Behr paint in Garden Vista, Nature’s Reflection, Mountain Peak White & Pink Mirage. The Doodle and I completed this project in a half days time.

Our laundry room was updated from both a form and function perspective and I can honestly say, I am in love. Onto the pantry next, stay tuned …