Harmony Hills Home and Garden: Junk Drawer Room Redo

Here in our new-to-us old home, we have a quirky room in our first floor that houses our laundry area and also serves as a half-bath powder room with sink and toilet. It's one of my favorite things in the house, this little room behind the pretty door.

I love having the laundry on the first floor, where I can keep track of progress while I go about other business around the house. I also love the shelves above the machines because they offer SO MUCH STORAGE! There is not a single closet in the first floor of this house, so having shelf space for cleaning supplies, light bulbs, first aid, dog supplies, candles, and various other things is really important.

There was one problem though: When you opened the pretty stained glass door, the first thing you saw was this:

Not such a pretty view! The shelves were piled full of all kinds of stuff, and it was UUUUUuuuuuuuuuGLY!

We lived with it this way for four or five months. It looked like this all through the Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday season with several parties and lots of guests in the house. Quite embarrassing!

I knew I had to do something about it when one of my closest, dearest friends said "You know, some people have a junk drawer, but you have a whole Junk Drawer Room!" Ouch!

So I got to thinking about how to make this eyesore look pretty. I figured there was no way I'd be able to hide all this stuff inside pretty baskets and still be able to store it all. Besides, the shelves are strange heights, and are not adjustable so I wouldn't have been able to find cute baskets to fit away.

So I decided to hang pretty curtains in front of the shelves. It worked out that a 48" cafe curtain was just the right length to cover the lowest portions of the shelves. I purchased four panels from Walmart, ironed them with a little spray starch, and hung them up. Much improved!

But still not pretty enough... the top two shelves are still looking ragged, and the window is so bare. After a little more thought I decided to use some simple decorative plastic bins to store the cleaning supplies and other sundries that are on the top most shelves. I got the bins from Target, after much searching and measuring to be sure they would fit the strange shelf dimensions.

For the window, I wanted something simple. I dug around in my linen closet and found some cloth napkins with a Battenberg lace corner that blends nicely with the lace detail on the cafe curtains. I used three of the napkins folded over on the diagonal. I ran a simple straight stitch along the center of the napkins to create a curtain rod pocket. Then I hung the make-shift valance up on a tension rod. Simple!

So after spending a few dollars at Walmart and Target, and one straight stitch on my sewing machine, the Laundry Room side of this pretty little room is now much prettier, still functional, and actually impresses our guests rather than confusing them!

And that's how we went from having a Junk Drawer Room to a pretty Laundry Room. Easy peasy!

One of these days I'll de-clutter the side of the room that's behind the door, and show that part too. For now, it's still got stacks of boxes, cases of Diet Coke and Mt. Dew, and who knows what else stacked up beside the sink. But someday, it will be as pretty as the laundry side of the room. :-)

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