Our small vintage laundry room

Our laundry room has been pretty much done since around Christmas time but I had been debating about swapping the light out for something less builder grade/modern and more vintage.  I think I've decided to leave it as is for now.  Anyway, getting pictures up on the blog is good incentive for actually cleaning up the space rather than ignoring it in favor of cleaning up the rooms that seem to matter most like the kitchen and living room.  It's not perfectly clean and you'll never see my hampers empty but I did dust the shelves so give me credit for that.

Our laundry room is actually pretty small.  Like maybe 7 x 8 or so.  So not giant laundry room with a huge folding island and room for an ironing board or small craft or office station.But it's much bigger than my old laundry room which only had a 2 x 5 foot section of floor space and where the door actually opened up into the space and took up much of that valuable floor space anyway.

 D built two stackable cubbies out of plywood which give me a sorting station for the clean clothes.  Right now, each person in our family has a basket and their clean, folded clothes go right into their basket.  The big kids are all responsible for putting that away as part of their chores each day.  To the right of that is an empty space where I keep the vacuum, mop, broom, and steamer.

I found some vintage shopping baskets on etsy and sewed some easy liners for them.  Those then hold the dirty clothes which the kids sort into lights and darks.  Ideally, I would have liked to have one more of those but I didn't have room for it so our towels all go into the green basket that sits on top of the cubbies.  Really, the towels stay in the bathrooms for the most part until I go get them to wash them so it's mostly just kitchen towels that find their way into the laundry room throughout the week.

The word "laundry" is made from chipboard letters from Hobby Lobby that I spraypainted with hammered metal paint.  The embroidered tea towels are some my great aunt gave me for our wedding.  I've used them occasionally for decoration but now I really have a much better way to see them.  I've seen several really cute things with wooden hangers so I knew I wanted to somehow use them in my laundry room.  I also knew I wanted to do something different for a curtain.  So I came up with this window valance.  The top section is a board with old glass doorknobs.  We had actually used it in Conleigh's old room but didn't have a place for it at the new house so I painted it black to use in the laundry room.  The curtain is a vintage lace tablecloth that I sectioned out evenly and clipped onto some wood hangers that I found at a thrift store.  I actually picked up a handful of wooden hangers at the thrift store so a few of the extras found homes in between the embroidered tea towels.

If I were to change anything, there are two things I would change.  1.  My washer and dryer doors open out into the laundry room instead of towards the exterior wall.  It's not a big deal but I have to step around the doors when I'm taking dry clothes out and putting them into the laundry baskets.  2.  The light fixture still sort of bugs me.  I love this light by Barn Electric but not the price tag.  I had contemplated trying to make my own from a plain school fixture by painting the base and the globe but I'm a little worried about it not putting out enough light since most schoolhouse fixtures only use one bulb.  So with that in mind, I think I'm going to leave what we have.

Anyway, so thankful for a new laundry room.  And always thankful for electricity and running water which make it all possible as I think about all the Haitian ladies who do their laundry in the river.