Living Clean: A Laundry Makeover (part 2)

I can’t tell you how much happier I am doing laundry in a bright, organized room!

You might recall, I was prompted to give our laundry room a mini-makeover as part of my commitment to use good, clean, and more sustainable products from Made to Matter, Handpicked by Target^TM.

We cleared out the clutter—part purge, part redistribution (e.g. swim goggles and pool towels by the pool, dog’s travel crate in the garage); we painted those red cabinets a more soothing grey; and we added a variety of boxes and baskets to add more concealed storage and free up some wall space. It makes the room feel much bigger! There are actually two windows in there, so it gets plenty of natural light—you just wouldn’t have known it from all the stuff we’d crammed in!

Here’s the before again…

…and the after.

We might add shelves to the wall over the washer/dryer eventually, but we freed up enough space to keep everything more spare for the time being.

Some favorite changes:

We switched out the outdated hardware on the cabinet doors and painted the cabinets grey. An electrician moved the light to the wall above the door for us.

I bought a set of matching Rubbermaid Bento Boxes (and added Room Essentials chalkboard labels) for storing things like sunscreens and bug repellants, lightbulbs and batteries, and supplies for sewing repairs.

We installed shaker-style peg rails (for hanging towels, cleaning supplies, and market totes).

We replaced some of our mismatched bathroom towels, and moved the old ones into a car-wash bin.

We added a valet bar behind the door for hanging shirts to dry. (Did I mention that I don’t own an ironing board?)

I used canning jars to store clothes pins and dog treats—and kept an empty one handy for emptying pockets of things like loose bills and change… or chapstick (that I had a tendency to melt).

We added a wall clock. We were on the fence about whether we needed a clock in the room, but I like glancing at the wall to remember when I started a load of wash.

Finally, an update on restocking our shelves from the Made to Matter, Handpicked by Target^TM collection:

I feel good about replacing our bathroom tissue and paper towels with 100% recycled products. And I found that that making that switch made me more conscious about using reusable cloths where appropriate, too. The Seventh Generation laundry detergent does everything our old brand did, but with less packaging (it’s ultra concentrated)—which is nice, especially when you’re trying to maximize your storage. And while I like to use free & clear laundry soap for the kids, I found that I love the smell of Method’s pink grapefruit hand wash (smells so clean) and all-purpose surface cleaner. Finally, I love the clean look of everything in the cupboards—it’s, well… delightful!

P.S. This is the third part of a series about giving the Made to Matter, Handpicked by Target^TM  collection a try. See my interview with the founders of Method and my first post on cleaning up and making over our laundry room with “before” photos.

This post is sponsored by Target. The Made To Matter line has been handpicked by Target to bring you brands that make things better for your you, your family, and the place we all call home.

Travelogue: Seattle in 48 hours (Round 3, with kids)

This was my third visit to Seattle, and on each visit my impression has been consistent: wow. I’m sure it hasn’t hurt that every visit has been free of the notorious drizzle, but even grey skies couldn’t obscure how beautiful this city is.

We were lucky to get to spend two nights in Seattle a little while back as part of Coast Hotel’s “Great Coast Road Trip.” Essentially, I was asked if I’d like to do a three-city leg of a multi-blogger road trip, write about for their website, and bring my family along. I’ve been invited for some press travel before, but rarely with Aron and the kids, so I usually decline. This was such a treat! You can of course read my posts about the trip on their site—and I’m under no obligation to say more—but we had such a great time (even as we were so daunted by the prospect of a road trip with an infant) that I still wanted to share a travelogue here, too.

Anyway, the plan was this: fly to Seattle and spend two nights there before picking up a Zipcar and driving part of the Cascades loop to Wenatchee, and then on to Portland, before passing along the car to someone else and flying home. We had never been to Portland or Wenatchee (and I’ll talk about those stops next week), and it had been 8 years since our last visit to Seattle… when we almost moved there! We were excited to go back.

The flight from Sacramento to Seattle passed so quickly! Aron and I started hatching plans for return trips before we even left the airport. For his part, Hudson would have been happy to never leave the airport tram.

On that note, public transportation into the city center is supposed to be simple and efficient, but we opted for a taxi as neither Hudson nor Skyler are carrying their own things yet—and they seem to require so much!

We arrived in Seattle right around nap time, so after checking in at the Roosevelt (our first Coast hotel), we took a little break before heading back out. We were downtown and, I noted, just off of the main shopping strip and blocks from the original Nordstrom. I briefly considered bidding the weary crew adieu for some afternoon shopping, but we had a fairly full itinerary.

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Headed south (& Friday links)

We’re flying south for a really quick getaway in Los Angeles. We’re staying on the cusp of Santa Monica and Venice which, while we lived in LA for five years ( a long time ago), isn’t as familiar a ‘hood to me. As much as I’d love to just visit all of our old haunts in West Hollywood and East LA, we may try to stick to the west side. Any tips?

In the meantime, I’m looking forward to sharing photos from our brief stay in Seattle, next week on the site, as well as the finished laundry room (we’re not talking miracles, but it is so much better than before).

Until then, some things of note… 

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