We've been tackling some major disorganization around here and managed to accomplish quite a bit this past weekend. Joey's work shifts have changed and he has Friday's off so I've managed to add a little to his honey-do list without sending him to the nut house (I mean the real nut house, not this one).
I've had my eye on this laundry dresser project forever and we finally put one together. We are completely re-organizing (and painting as you can see) the pantry/laundry room and this is such a great way to save space and keep the clothes from ending up all over the place. A family of 7 makes for a lot of laundry so it can get out of hand quickly.
The best part is we used a small portion of the furniture scraps we found on a huge pallet at IKEA (and the whole kit and kaboodle cost 9.99)!!! Look at all that in the car! I've got enough stuff there for another couple of big projects and there was a whole shelving unit made from a beautiful honey colored wood which just needs to be reassembled. Score! So the only cost for the laundry unit was the price of the metal angle brackets that the baskets slide on (35.00 total) and 3.00 for each laundry basket.
We set the new unit directly under our laundry chute which needs a little finish work itself but is such a nice thing to have in a big house (Joey installed that after I looked at our house plans and discovered the pantry was directly beneath the master closet). We need a few more shelves in here for our larger items and I'll finish painting (with my cute blue oops paint which cost 5.00 for the gallon) and then we'll be done. Yay!
We decided to take on the boys school area too. They are both being homeschooled this year and we realized the best place to put them was up in my sewing room (whimper). So we took the opportunity to replace our bedroom door (which had a hole in it and some scribbling which I did not do) and used that as their new school table. I bought some more laminated fabric at IKEA at a cost of about 19.00 for 2.5 yards (it's 57 inches across, yay!) and covered the door on the side without a dumb hole in it.
I just pulled it tight after cutting the excess fabric off, and stapled it in place. My first try ended up too loose when we turned it over so I took out some staples and pulled the fabric super tight before stapling it. That worked much better.
We set the table on some trestle legs we already had in the garage, which is great because it's sturdy without being attached to the wall. Joey found a great shelf in the garage (we already had the brackets) and I was thrilled to realize I had enough fabric to cover the shelf as well. So much bang for my buck and it actually looks really cute in here so I don't mind sharing my space as much. I filled in the holes in the wall and just need some more paint and it'll look so sharp.

I'm just getting started too! I hope your back to school plans are going smoothly (or as smooth as possible I suppose). It's a crazy time but I try to remember how much fun it was as a kid to have fresh pencils and Pee-Chees and that helps me keep from getting too crabby. Have a great week!


















