Top Shelf

By the end of this post you are going to be amazed by my organizational skills, or think I'm a complete dorkus.

..I'm leaning towards the latter. Just a heads up.

About a two months ago when I reorganized the kitchen I made the laundry nook go from this:

to this:

and was quite proud of myself. :::pats self on back::: Good job, LB.. way to organize a full shelf.
What I didn't show you was what was lurking on the floor next to the washer.
Of course we forgot to take a 'before' picture, but trust me all this

was jam packed in there. It was a holy mess.

 

So on Saturday when I came home from a cheer clinic, JEGs had a surprise for me: he was going to install ClosetMaid in the laundry nook!

JEGs has a relationship with ClosetMaid. And I don't mean casual drinks-and-the-occasional-nookie relationship, I mean full on If-I-didn't-give-LB-a-ring-first kind of relationship. It started when he was living in his first bachelor pad in the Dub C. He didn't have enough closet space so he added more shelves for his t-shirts in his closet. When we moved into Falconhead, we had ZERO storage, and I had a lot of crap. So he did his ClosetMaid magic in our walk-in and doubled our storage space (which can be seen here and here).

I have to admitt, their website is pretty cool. You can design a space in 3D and then the website gives you an exact list of every nut, bolt and screw you need. So JEGs jotted down what we needed and we headed out to Home Depot.

JEGs started off simply by adding another self above the existing self

and wrapped it all the way around. From there he added four shelves down the wall for extra storage.

Go ahead and drool if you need to. It's pretty amazing

All wiped up? Ok, let's take a closer look...

On the shelf that was already there we kept things that I access on a weekly basis; cleaning supplies (all gathered in the basket) and laundry detergent positioned directly above the washer so I can pour my cocktail of washing suds

The new shelf above that has things we really won't need that often, such as Christmas decorations, our excessive amounts of Qtips and the extra paper towel holder

The other side holds all our painting supplies, the grooviest ice bucket you'll ever see and extra plastic cups for all of our frat parties social gatherings

Right now you are thinking, 'Wow LB.. you, um... have quite a collection of paper products...'
I promise you we don't have regular bouts with diarrhea. We bought in bulk for OBX and are still living off what we brought back. So for that reason, we have an entire shelf dedicated for all things paper

On the third shelf is our impressive Tupperware collection. When I orginally put them in the drawer I must have had a multitude of dirty ones in the sink, because we could not get them to fit anymore. Now there is plenty of room for them and they can hang out with our trash bag (which we also buy in bulk)

The fourth shelf has NOTHING! We figured perhaps we can store some electronics there like the coffee maker and toaster, to make more room on the counter. Or we can use this as dry storage so JEGs doesn't have to lay on the floor to retrieve the spaghetti out of the cabinet next to the sink. For right now we are leaving it empty to decided what works for us best.

Last but not least our broom and Swiffer are up off the floor.

The end result? A perfectly organized laundry nook- and a fiance who gets giddy everytime she opens the doors to do laundry.

... and that, my friends, is worth JEGs' weight in gold.

Always & Forever,

ME