Are you all tired of my laundry room yet?

You're not? You'd love me to go on and on about decorating the smallest room in my house? Great! Me too!

I've decided we are going to take the "Dave Ramsey" approach to decorating. You know the whole "start with the smallest debt" or "snowball" approach meant to motivate and help you gain momentum? Well just consider this Manda's patented Snowball Approach to Decorating.

Yep

Or the "we're too broke to decorate real rooms so watch me go all Young House Love on my 6ft X 6ft laundry room."

Now that you understand my mentality...or are totally confused...whatever...we can move on to the progress I've made.

I mentioned in my last laundry room post finding some great glass jars at the thrift store and Target. You can see them here, I paid a whopping $15 for all of those together, the two most expensive of course being from Target but both those were technically on sale too. The middle jars were thrift store finds. I like the modern/vintage sort of mix, that's my new modus operandi in this house. The jar on the far left will hold homemade laundry soap when I make it (post forthcoming). Then the other containers hold the regular Tide detergent we'll continue using for cloth diapers and baking soda and maybe clothespins? The water pitcher (yes it says water, I'm going to scratch that off) holds vinegar which we use for the diapers. The little ceramic piggy used to be my husband's iPad fund but since he got his iPad finally it will become my friend to collect loose change from pockets here. The basket holds dryer sheets and then there's a picture of T-rex as a newborn that I added for fun and because it sort of matches better here than anywhere else.

On the other side of the room I have put away at least half of our linens in here. I ended up not wanting to ruin my pretty space above the washer/dryer with cleaning supplies that don't go in the jars so they are here in the bottom basket and alongside the top one. That might change but for now it works okay.

These baskets were another Target find and while I like the fabric I am planning to replace it with more of the yellow fabric from the ironing board to tie that into the room and make them pop more. I'm also going to make labels to attach/tie onto the baskets and I might get 1-2 more for that top shelf so I can have two that hold linens, one for twin size bedding and one for queen size bedding.

So that's where we are so far! I'm loving how tidy and functional the room is now! The pretty factor makes it kind of fun to do the laundry and motivates me not to treat it like a catch-all closet for random junk.

Projects to complete in the laundry room:

• make homemade laundry soap
• get more baskets for shelves?
• make labels for baskets
• sew fabric liners for the baskets in the same yellow as the ironing board

Eventually I'd like to:

• add one or two white wall cabinets above the washer/dryer to store cleaning supplies out of sight and allow me to put a child safety lock on them
• add a clothing rod of some sort for clothes that need to be line dried year-round (the trick here is putting one low enough that I can reach it over the washer/dryer and yet high enough to not conflict with the lower shelf. We're currently thinking of the retractable clothesline that can come out of one wall and attach to the other right above the washer/dryer and then goes away when not in use)
• Replace the fluorescent light (eww, nothing worse than fluorescent, my husband absolutely hates them and I can't say I'm a fan either)

Question?

Do you think I should attach some of the yellow fabric ruffled to the edge of the white shelf above the washer/dryer to hide the utility attachments and unpainted wall or leave it as is for a crisper look?