Sunday, February 22, 2015

The Laundry Room: Wash Your Knickers and Hang Up Some Pictures

A year ago I decided to start decorating my laundry room. I am lucky enough to have a separate room for laundry on the first floor so I decided, why not make it look cute? I was in there pretreating stains for what seemed like forever, I might as well have something pleasant to look at besides a white wall.

During that time I was off work for 12 weeks following shoulder surgery #2. I took it easy the first 7 weeks, no picking up Jackson (at that time he was 21 months old) or anything heavier than a quart of milk. Needless to say it was hell.

Tasks I took for granted now became excruciatingly hard; taking Jackson upstairs, changing diapers one handed, putting Jackson to bed in his crib or getting him out using two step stools, even doing the dishes (I don't recommend doing dishes with one hand). Some days were better than others. I really don't remember it being that hard the first time around, but then again I didn't have a little one that was still pretty much a baby.

I was determined to get as much done as I could during my time off. I single handedly (seriously I only used my right hand) painted our laundry room and office. I painted our kitchen cabinets (post coming soon!). I also put up much needed artwork in the kitchen and laundry room. I threw in a few crafty endeavors of making wreaths, paintings and decorations for Jackson's monster birthday party. Oh, and (yes, I'm tooting my own horn) we potty trained Jackson by 23 months.

I realized that I could get A LOT of stuff done when I don't come home exhausted from work all the time...*sigh* Oh how I envy you stay at home mamas. 

Now back to the task at hand. I am going to show you my laundry room portraits that were practically free to make with products I had around the house. I am not going to do a full reveal of the laundry room yet because it's not quite done, I have a couple more diy projects up my sleeve.
I really pinterested it up looking for laundry room decorating ideas and I found two simply adorable ones all over Pinterest. Here is a cute example of the first idea at We are THAT family. I, of course, changed mine up to better suit my taste, color scheme and to go with my laundry room theme.
I started with one of my empty frames that I got from a garage sale and painted it black. I then bought a spool of thin wire and some mini clothespins from Walmart for a couple of bucks. I had some black and white square Instagram pictures made since I thought square pictures would look best (and I'm really into square photos right now for some reason). I chose pictures of messy Jackson, Jackson taking a bath and Jackson doing cutesy things in the laundry room. I can very easily change these out as he gets older or if I take a picture that I'd rather have in there. For now I love these!

After I had all my supplies I stapled the wire to the back of the frame. I had to pound the staples down with a hammer so they would lay flat, but hey, it worked! 
After I positioned the wire how I wanted it I simply clothespinned the pictures on, hung the frame and admired. Super easy and super cheap.

My next portrait project was even easier! There were tons of pics using wood pants hangers on Pinterest. Here's a great example at Brit.co along with some other unconventional ways to hang pictures. I again changed it up to suit my laundry room. I simply took a few wood pants hangers (which I use for tube tops) and clamped on (again square) 8x8 black and white photos that I taped, using photo safe two way tape, onto a piece of cardboard. I then hung them up with a couple of nails. That's it. Easy peasy.
I absolutely love how these turned out! Even though I repeated a couple pictures (it's all I could find at the time) I know I will and can easily change them out as Jackson grows. I hung a vintage washboard up along with free laundry room printables (I just love printables!). The one on the left is thanks to My Three Monsters.
I can almost say I enjoy doing laundry now because I get to look up at my sweet peanut while I pretreat 25 pairs of his stained jammies, pants and shirts.

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