Laundry Room - Part One

We are approaching our 2nd anniversary of moving into our home. Since we moved in with tons undone, we are still plugging on with finishing rooms and projects. This little mud room has been my laundry room for the last two years. Thankfully, I did have a dryer stacked on the washer, but I took this picture right after JD and Gabriel carried it down-stairs. There was obviously only room for our 2nd fridge, the stacked washer and dryer and one hamper. The cat and dog food have lived in front of the seldom used door as well.

Since our little mud room is right next to the school room, I tend to throw mounds of clothes in front of our one book-case all day long until the time the kids fold it in the evening. Alei folds mine and the little guys and leaves it on our school table for me to put away. Sometimes it sits there for days (hard to believe!) and we just move school to the kitchen table.

Granted, this system isn't my dream system for laundry for 11, so I've been kind of anxious to move the whole operation (and mess) downstairs!

Another by-product of this is that there wasn't any room for shoes in the mud-room, so we lived with lovely, lovely shoe shelves from our old mud room on the front porch. Not attractive, to say the least! So, yesterday, the kids and I moved the ugly shoe shelves to the mud-room.

We then loaded the wheelbarrow with shoes and hauled them around also. While I did dispose of an entire bag of shoes, it still seems ludicrous that 11 people need this many pairs of shoes!



I still want to build new, more effective use of space shelves in the mud room, but for now at least they are off the porch!


Here's Julia smiling on the front porch that has been converted from out-door shoe gallery into an actual front porch!

The downstairs laundry room will be part two tomorrow - JD is actually at Lowe's right now to get supplies to finish hooking up the second washer and dryer.

I don't know a big family that doesn't understand what a challenge laundry (and shoes) are for a large family and I am certainly no exception!