34 weeks of Clean 2019! Week 22- The Laundry/Mud Room

Welcome back to 34 Weeks of Clean!  If this is your first time joining us, we are so glad you are here! Even though we are on the downhill part of this series, I want to encourage you to pick up where we are and just move forward.  No step is little when it comes to cleaning and organizing.  It all counts and it is all good!  We are in the process of taking our homes back, one week at a time!  You can do it. 

This week we are headed to our laundry rooms/mudrooms!

My new laundry room is still a work in progress.  This is one area of our house that I settled for a much smaller area than I would have liked when we bought this house.  Sometimes you just can't get everything on your wish list.  As our kids are growing up, all but our youngest are responsible for their own clothes so my time in the laundry room is pretty minimal compared to what it has been in the past.  None the less, I would love to have someone take out that small cabinet in the corner and move the washer and dryer to the back wall under the window to make more space. (yes, it will fit, I have already measured!) I would then hang a bar under the cabinets that I could use to hang things for drying.  One can dream, right?! 

Anyway, here we go...

• Take everything out.  You knew it, right? ;)  Yes, you can leave the washer and dryer, but all else comes out.  If your hubby is available, the appliances should come away from the walls too!

• Wipe down all surfaces, including floors.  It is hard to squeeze behind those appliances, but trust me, you need to.  It is dusty back there.  Ask me how I know these things!

• If you have windows in this area, clean them, and don't forget to look up and clean out light fixtures and ceiling fans if you have them.  Yes, I had more blinds to clean.

• Take the time to clean out your washing machine.  Even the top loading ones can get grimy, but the newer front loading ones especially do.  We use a vinegar solution and occasionally resort to bleach.  In hindsight, I would not purchase front loading washing machine again!  I hate leaving it open, but if I do not it  begins to smell.  Plus, I have decided I am too old to squat down to get things in and out of it!

    Before you put things back, ask yourself

            - do I need it?

            -does it belong somewhere else? 

I ended up getting rid of quite a lot and consolidating a lot of bottles of stuff.  The previous owner left tons of special wood floor and tile cleaners and some we ended up just tossing.

*One last thing about my Dawn container.  Yes, I use Dawn to wash dishes.  We make a lot of our own cleaning products, including laundry soap, but I still use Dawn for dishes.  Any time I finish a bottle I fill it with water and put it in the laundry room as my "stain stick."  Seriously, Dawn will take out most stains, and I save a little money by "recycling."

• If you have a separate mud room, start at the top and do the same basic cleaning!  After a long winter in many places, those areas need a bit of TLC!

So that is it for this week.  Pretty simple, huh?  Can't wait to hear how you did last week!  Don't forget to show us your progress by leaving a picture on our Facebook page!  

Have a blessed week, my friends!

Blessings,

Intro Week
Week 1- Holiday Decorations
Week 2-The Pantry
Week 3-Kitchen Cabinets and Drawers   

Week 4- Fridge, Freezer and Floors
Week 5- Recipes 
Week 6- The Stove and Loose Ends 
Week 7- The Dining Room 
Week 8- The Living Room 
Week 9- Books 
Week 10- Bathrooms  
Week 11- The Foyer
Week 12- The Family Room and DVDs 
Week 13- Pictures and Scrapbooks
Week 14- Arts, Crafts and Hobbies 
Week 15- The Master Bedroom  
Week 16- The Master Closet 

Week 17- The Master Bathroom

Week 18- Halftime

Week 19- Bedrroms 1 &2

Week 20- Bedrooms 3+

Week 21- The Hall Closet

34 Weeks of Clean Rinse and Repeat: Week 22-The Laundry/Mud Room

Welcome back to 34 Weeks of Clean!  If this is your first time joining us, we are so glad you are here! Even though we are on the downhill part of this series, I want to encourage you to pick up where we are and just move forward.  No step is little when it comes to cleaning and organizing.  It all counts and it is all good!  We are in the process of taking our homes back, one week at a time!  You can do it.  

This week we are headed to our laundry rooms/mudrooms!

First I want to show you this!

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/301741243759234263/

and this

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/301741243756358026/

Ummm, these are NOT my laundry rooms and my new laundry/mudroom is still a work in progress.  These are the ones of my dreams.  Actually, in my dreams mine is even more amazing, but for now, it is just a dream. When you move every few years and are usually in base housing or rentals, you have to deal with reality instead.  And trust me, reality is far different.

Before the wall was taken out

Thanks to a wonderful husband, we recently had the wall between our laundry room and mudroom taken out to make one larger space.  It is still a work in progress.  The new built-ins still need to be painted and decorating has not been finished. Because this area is directly off our kitchen, I want the cabinets to match and since I want the cabinets in our kitchen to be painted, well, you see where this is going.  It is a big project that we need to hire someone to do.  I am in saving mode at the moment so you get what you see for now.

 Because this area is off our garage and where we enter the house,  it tends to collect layers of stuff.  A bad habit we are working on, I promise!  

This week- let's tackle those laundry rooms and mud rooms!

Here we go...

• Take everything out.  You knew it, right? ;)  Yes, you can leave the washer and dryer, but all else comes out.  If your hubby is available, the appliances should come away from the walls too!

• Wipe down all surfaces, including floors.  It is hard to squeeze behind those appliances, but trust me, you need to.  It is dusty back there.  Ask me how I know these things!

• If you have windows in this area, clean them, and don't forget to look up and clean out light fixtures and ceiling fans if you have them.

• Take the time to clean out your washing machine.  Even the top loading ones can get grimy, but the newer front loading ones especially do.  We use a vinegar solution and occasionally resort to bleach.

• Before you put things back, ask yourself

            - do I need it?

            -does it belong somewhere else?

 As for me, I'm actually still working on this project as well.  I told you I do everything I assign you, promise, but we are usually a few weeks ahead of you for blogging's sake.  This week has proven to be a crazy one, so know that while you work, I am doing so as well!  I will post more pictures later this week!

One last thing about my Dawn container.  Yes, I use Dawn to wash dishes.  We make a lot of our own cleaning products, including laundry soap, but I still use Dawn for dishes.  Any time I finish a bottle I fill it with water and put it in the laundry room as my "stain stick."  Seriously, Dawn will take out most stains, and I save a little money by "recycling."

So that is it for this week.  Pretty simple, huh?  Can't wait to hear how you did last week!  Don't forget to show us your progress by leaving a picture on our Facebook page!  If you are posting pictures each week, your name will be put into a drawing for our 34 Weeks of Clean Prize Basket that will be given away at the end of our series.  The pile is growing and will include a mason jar filled with our laundry soap!

Have a blessed week, my friends!

Blessings,

Remodel anyone?

We are working our way through a long list of things we (read, mostly me) want to do to the house we bought last year.  Some were easy fixes like painting the front and back doors and working on the landscaping, while updating the boys' bathroom was a little more time consuming.  But so far, we have been able to do the things ourselves.

But the laundry room/mudroom was a different story.

Try to picture this- the space off the garage to enter the house was a rectangular area, SMALL, and well, small.  Trying to fit 6 people in there at once to take off shoes and coats when we came home was a nightmare.  And then trying to fit all that stuff in a little closet with an annoying bi-fold door??  Good luck!

 

Right beside it was an identical space that shared a wall - our laundry room.  It didn't seem too small when we bought the house but let's just say that after a few weeks of laundry, I realized it was a little tight.

Laundry day, can you tell?

Basically, the wall between the two areas was in my way!

And once I am annoyed by something, it grates on my nerves.  Like every single time I came in from the garage or tried to do the laundry.

So I begged my husband to change it and he graciously hired someone to fix it.  In December.

 

Because it seemed like a good idea at the time!  NOT.

Well, it was a great idea, the timing just wasn't the best.  You know, because of the holidays and all.  And company.  And having people over.  And the chaos of December,  And....

Do you EVEN know how much dust there is in your house when a wall is torn down and they pull out trim, and sanding, and painting, and putting in new lights, and tiling, and building a new "drop zone" for coats and such???

Have I mentioned that said space then empties into my kitchen, and was not at the time separated by a door?  Yes, there is one there now.  But during the 4 weeks of work, NOPE!

And there was a layer of dust over my entire main floor with several layers in the kitchen alone.  No matter how much I wiped down the counters and counter tops and mopped it was a mess.

In December.

Yep, not fun.  But the good news is we are done.  Mostly!

The built ins still need to be painted as do the existing cabinets around the washer and dryer, but we are waiting to decide on a color to do our kitchen cabinets first so they will all match.  One thing at a time, says the hubby!  We (read I) also want to replace the utility sink with a stainless one, but that will be a future project.

The good news is we love the space.  SO much more open with out the wall, a much more resilient floor to handle dirt,

an open area to hang coats and leave shoes that replaced the useless closet,

Still working on paint and finding matching baskets for the upper storage!

brighter with two additional lights,

and a place to hide mops and brooms!

Plus there is a door now between this space and the kitchen we can close if we need to!

 

So what's next?

We have decided to update our master bathroom on our own!  In the summer! ;)

Blessings,

34 Weeks of Clean! Week 22- The Laundry Room/Mudroom

Welcome back to 34 weeks of Clean!  If this is your first time joining us we are so glad you are here.  Even though we are on the downhill part of this series, I want to encourage you to pick up where we are and just move forward.  No step is little when it comes to cleaning and organizing.  It all counts and it is all good!  We are in the process of taking our homes back, one week at a time!  You can do it.  This week we are headed to our laundry rooms/mudrooms!

First I want to show you this!

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/301741243759234263/

and this

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/301741243756358026/

Ummm, these are NOT my laundry rooms and I do not even have a mudroom.  They are the ones of my dreams.  Actually, in my dreams mine is even more amazing, but for now, it is just a dream. When you move every few years and are usually in base housing or rentals, you have to deal with reality instead.  And trust me, reality is far different.

Yes, it is crowded and yes, it is a mess.  In this house my laundry room is on the main floor, not a bad location, behind a sliding pocket door, with not nearly enough room.  Technically it can not even be considered a room as you are half in and half out when you are working in there.  As you can see, there is barely enough room for one laundry basket.  Luckily it is just slightly shorter than the swinging door of the dryer, or it would not fit either.

A note about laundry baskets.  I am not a huge fan of them being in individual bedrooms, ESPECIALLY boys' rooms!  In my experience, they tend to be a smelly mess, take up much needed space for toys and such, and just add to the clutter problem.  My girls do have their own baskets because they do their own laundry and their rooms are on another floor, and I have one in the master bathroom for my husband and myself.

Despite the fact that this space is small, it collects layers of stuff.  A bad habit we are working on, I promise!  If it were mine I would change some things up, like PAINT, but for now, we have to deal with it as is.

So here we go...

• Take everything out.  You knew it, right? ;)  Yes, I did leave the washer and dryer, but all else came out.  If my hubby had been convenient, the appliances would have come out too!

• Wipe down all surfaces, including floors.  It is hard to squeeze behind those appliances, but trust me, you need to.  It is dusty back there.  Ask me how I know these things!

• Take the time to clean out your washing machine.  Even the top loading ones can get grimy, but the newer front loading ones especially do.  We use a vinegar solution and occasionally resort to bleach.

• Before you put things back, ask yourself

            - do I need it?

            -does it belong somewhere else?

 As for me, I scrubbed, sorted, and threw away some things.  I arranged the shelves a little better and even hung a few pictures on a whim.  I figured if I was in there it could at least bring me a little joy!

One last thing about my Dawn container.  Yes, I use Dawn to wash dishes.  We make a lot of our own cleaning products, including laundry soap, but I still use Dawn for dishes.  Any time I finish a bottle I fill it with water and put it in the laundry room as my "stain stick."  Seriously, Dawn will take out most stains, and I save a little money by "recycling."

So that is it for this week.  Pretty simple, huh?  Can't wait to hear how you did last week!  Don't forget to link up and show us your progress or leave a picture on our Facebook page!  For each link or picture left, your name is put into a drawing for our 34 weeks of Clean Prize Basket that will be given away at the end of our series.  The pile is growing and will include a mason jar filled with our laundry soap!

Week 21- The Hall Closet

Week 23- The Linen Closet

An InLinkz Link-up

Linking up with friends!

Blessings,