Our Laundry Room Reveal!
* This post has been sponsored by Rubbermaid® FastTrack® Closet™. As always, all opinions are my own.*
We live in a little 1,000 sq ft house that was built in 1929, and we love it with our whole hearts. But let me tell you, in the last four years as we've added two kids to our family, there are moments when it feels so small. T.J. and I will lock eyes, while both kids are crying, there's cat barf on the floor, laundry is everywhere, we are out of iced coffee and be like "WE NEED MORE SPACE AHHHHH!" It was moments like that one that led us to finally, after almost 10 years of living in our house, do something about our unused basement.
Thanks to a partnership with Rubbermaid® FastTrack® Closet™ and Lowes, we kicked things into gear to give ourselves a much-needed laundry room!
The first step was to take everything out of the basement, which was a lot of stuff. Bins of high school and childhood memories (aka: T.J.'s wrestling medals), holiday decorations and honestly, a lot of junk we didn't need to be holding onto anymore!
Here is a before photo just to show you how scary the basement actually was. Way back there in the far corner, you can see our dryer!
Once the basement was empty, T.J. painted the walls and floor and WOW did that make a difference.
The next step was to have our friend, Mike, build a wall between the "playroom side" of the basement and the "laundry side" of the basement. It is so nice having them divided into two separate rooms. Most of the time, we leave the little pocket door between the two rooms open but, if and when we need to, we slide that bad boy shut and we've got ourselves a playroom with no dirty laundry hanging around.
Once the wall was finished, we painted everything—including the ceiling—white. I am so happy with how the ceiling in the laundry room turned out. Because the ceiling in the basement is really just the underside of our hardwood floor, it's got the character that I love and the brightness that our basement needs!
The most exciting part of the whole project was getting to install our FastTrack Rubbermaid Closet system. When you live in such a small house, every space matters and I didn't want that nice open wall on the laundry side to go to waste! I knew that we needed some sort of shelving system to go there—one that would hold extra cleaning supplies, laundry detergent, and a bunch of our hangers so clothes can be hung right out of the dryer.
We purchased our FastTrack system at Lowes which, by the way, have you been there lately? I want all of the things. All of the organization systems and patio furniture and paint colors. Man! Nothing fires me up more than a trip to Lowes because you go in looking for one thing and you leave feeling like Joanna Gains. I CAN DO ANYTHING!
T.J. and I installed the entire system in under an hour, and I really enjoyed moving all the pieces around to figure out what combination I wanted for our space. You can visit Rubermaid's Design Tool to help create your closet, too. Once we landed on the final layout, I started filling it with all of our stuff, which is always my favorite part of any house project. I used wicker baskets and glass jars to organize all of my laundry and cleaning supplies. I love how it turned out!
Starting May 15 and running through June 15, you can enter the FastTrack Closet Instant Win & Sweepstakes to win prizes ranging from a $1,000 FastTrack Closet to $100 and $50 Lowe's Gift Cards.
It only took us 10 years but we finally have a clean, bright laundry room. It's quite possibly the most organized room in our house right now. Oh, you need some extra paper towels? Yeah... top shelf. Rollerballs and misters? Middle shelf. Extra toilet paper and guest towels? Bottom drawers. BOOM. Organized.
We've only had the laundry room completed for a couple of weeks, and it's already been a game changer. Now when I hear the washer or dryer buzz, I don't think to myself "let me find my flip-flops so I can go down into the dark, gross basement." Nope! I go down barefoot now you guys, and I might even smile on my way. :)