How to Hide the Laundry Room Uglies

This is my laundry room.  Have you noticed that laundry rooms have some necessary things in them that are ugly?  Like the tap/drain box and the outlet.  You definitely need these at an easily accessible location, but they don’t add much charm to the room!
And since we all love doing laundry so much, we want our laundry rooms to be as cute and inviting as possible to lure us in!
So here’s how I hid my laundry room “uglies”. . .
. . . a cute towel bar and towel to cover the electrical outlet.  Found the towel bar on our local “Buy and Sell”.  I’ve never actually had a towel hanging in the laundry room before, and I use it all the time – how did I not have one before?
To cover the taps I used a long narrow basket that used to sit on my counter and hold the keys.  I spray-painted it oil rubbed bronze to match my knobs and chandelier and stuck a fake plant in it.  Fits perfectly and hides the lovely red and blue taps!
So much cuter!!!
I think the vintage washer and dryer add to the charm.  We got these babies just before our first daughter was born, so they’re over twenty years old now.  We’ve only ever had one minor problem with the washer.  Yay Kenmore!!!
I love the wall colour {Grey Evening by Behr}.  And I love my light!!!  See the lines it casts on the walls – feels like water, which seems appropriate for a laundry room.
This is an interior room so there is no window.  When I hung the mirror window on the wall it immediately brightened and enlarged the space.  See that little brown bag sitting on the mirror ledge?  It’s a bag of wild flower seeds that actually came from Green Gables in PEI.  When I have a yard, I’ll plant them.
I really love my little laundry room.  This is my view as I walk past it many times a day (it’s right beside my bedroom – very convenient!).  See those white shelves in front of the washer?  They’ll be going up on the wall over the sink someday.  I’ve got more plans for this room – including a quote from President Thomas S. Monson about laundry!
Stay tuned (hopefully within the year!).
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Here’s the quote from Thomas S. Monson:

“Rather than dwelling on the past, we should make the most of today, of the here and now, doing all we can to provide pleasant memories for the future…If you are still in the process of raising children be aware that the tiny fingerprints that show up on almost every newly cleaned surface, the toys scattered about the house, the piles and piles of laundry to be tackled, will disappear all too soon, and that you will, to your surprise, miss them, profoundly.”

Flowered Mirror

I love my flowered mirror!!!  It was hanging in the entryway of my last house, but in my new home it’s going to be over the sink in the guest bathroom.  I’ll pick some of my favourite colours from it for the towels, wash cloths, rug and other accessories.  Now watch, I’m gonna have a line up of people wanting to visit my bathroom!!!
It was very easy to make.  First I bought a plain unfinished framed mirror.  Or you could find an ugly old mirror from anywhere – and it doesn’t really even need a frame, you could just glue onto the edge of the mirror.
Next step was to glue Spanish Moss all over the frame – I just used my glue gun.  Sorry, I don’t have step-by-step pictures – I made this a few years ago – but the frame covered in moss even looked good!  (Just ignore the spot of wax from the glue gun on my moss.  I promise you don’t notice it on the mirror, but of course that would be the spot I took a picture of!)
Then I just started gluing my wild flowers on.
I did larger flower arrangements on the bottom of the frame to anchor the mirror.  Then I placed the rest of my larger flowers around the frame and used the smaller ones to fill in the gaps.
Taking pictures of mirrors is not easy, especially with the short person around!  After looking at this photo, I realized how dirty the mirror was.  So I cleaned it – but didn’t retake my pictures!
I think it’s so pretty!  I just love all the colours of the flowers together.  It would also look great done in a single colour, or a single type of flower in various colours – oh the possibilities!!!

DVD Holder

There’s gotta be a cute way to store DVD’s right?  I asked my guy to build these little DVD houses for me, and he did!!!  I think they’d look even cuter with little chimneys.
See that pink section – those are our Barbie movies!!!
These looked really cute in our last house.  They sat on the ledge around the family room with little pine trees and other cute doodads around them.  Now, during our building house/transition time, they just sit on the floor – not looking as cute, but still doing their job.
My baby really likes them this height!!!
She pulls them all off many times each day!!!  We put some of her baby books in front of the DVD’s to distract her.  Yeah – great plan!  But it didn’t work.  She just sits there longer, reading books between yanking off more DVD’s.
Thanks Mac – you know, I’d rather be creating than cleaning up your messes – again!!!

Hooks

I have a beadboard shelf that I love, but I thought I’d be able to do a little more with it if it had some hooks on it.  So I was looking for oil rubbed bronze hooks at Walmart – and I found some!  But they were $2 more each than the exact same hook with the bright brass finish.
So what did I do?
I bought the cheaper brass hooks for $1.97 each and took them home to doctor them up a little with my newest favourite thing – spray paint (which I didn’t need to buy since I already had plenty of at home!).
My guy taught me this little trick for spray painting the tops of screws – just poke them in cardboard so they stand up nicely.
Couple coats later, and I’m now the proud owner of the more expensive hooks, at the less expensive price!!!  And I know it’s only $4 I saved, but it makes me feel good!  And there’s a lot you can buy at the dollar store for that much!!!
I screwed them on and now I can do so  much more with my shelf – like hang things from it!
It’s a fun little place to decorate for the seasons!
Lovin’ it, lovin’ it!!!