Another shelf for the laundry room!

We are trying to plan our evenings so we efficiently get things done throughout the week.  Instead of making a huge list for the week and trying to do too many things at one time, we make a short list each day of things we would like to accomplish before heading to bed.  For example, Wednesday's list was: 

1. wash 1 load of  laundry
2. put away all clean laundry
3. take measurements in bedroom
4. measure space for counter in laundry room
5. bring laundry basket from landing upstairs

Laundry is pretty much a constant on the list, and we never seem to get around to putting it all away.  Like on Wednesday.  We ended up working later than we expected, so by the time we got home and ate, it was too late to put any of L.Soup's clothes away before putting her to bed.  Which was unfortunate, considering most of the laundry that hasn't been put away at the moment belongs to her.  I think there are currently 2.5 baskets sitting around our house dedicated to her stuff.

So obviously #2 on the list didn't happen.  But we did get one full load of our laundry done and put away, along with another load that was waiting to be put away.  (#2 got moved over to Thursday's list, and we actually got all of L.Soup's clothes dealt with before bed time.  So that's progress!)

While I was reading to L.Soup, I heard D.Soup doing some measuring.  So I figured he was getting #4 done.  #3 was my job, since I'm measuring for the nightstands my friend and I are building on Sunday (!!).  As I was putting L.Soup into her crib, I heard the saw running.  So did my girl.  So that jacked up our whole night time routine, since we had to talk about daddy being NOISY a million times before she would settle down.

So we over achieved on one step of our to do list, which took away from a few other parts.  But it means that the big shelf in the laundry room is done!  We added a leg to the other shelf, but its covered in stuff and ugly so I didn't take a picture of it.  For this shelf, we used two longer sections of ready to stain panels similar to this.  We only needed about 77 inches of actual board, but the options were 96 or 72, so we had to go for the longer pieces and cut them down.  Unfortunately, as we discovered last time, the walls are not square, so it called for some special measuring that I did not get to be a part of, since someone didn't want to wait until I was done with the bedtime routine.  No big deal, he did a spectacular job without me and didn't even have to go back for a second round of cutting.

He had to notch out a section for the tubes that run to the back of the washing machine, you can see them on the left hand side of the picture below.  A little stain and a little molding around the edges and these shelves are done!  I can't stain while I'm pregnant, but D.Soup said he's all over it, so it can actually get done soon!  Woo!

It's so beautiful.

I have been using Country Save liquid detergent for the last two years.  I really like it, and the fact that my clothes don't have any specific scent to them anymore.  D.Soup decided he wanted something that was specifically HE, so we switched over to the powdered version to give it a try.  Which means I now get to display it in a pretty glass jar on top of the new counter!

My new laundry detergent container!

It also means that I shouldn't have to buy laundry detergent for another 4 years.  We've been using the same 4 bottles I purchased in March 2012, and we're almost done the last bottle.  That's including some leakage we had due to one of the bottles having a crack in the bottom.

The powder came in another pack of 4, but each box is supposed to cover 160 loads of laundry.  Amazing.
 
To round things out, I also got a little trash can to stuff all the dryer lint into.  This is a step up for me considering before we were just piling it on top of the dryer until it got out of hand.  Which was frequently.

New little trash can for lint!

After taking these pictures, I emptied out a laundry basket and sat it on top.  There's still so much room!  I love it so much.

The laundry room work is probably going to go on hiatus pretty soon, in lieu of the attic stairs.  I'm going to try to get the curtains up while D.Soup is working on other things, so if that happens there will be another laundry room post.

I'm just happy to have this much done this quickly.