We Tweak

My laundry room is a wonderful place.  (For a better view of it, click here for this post in which I did a little tour of that room.)  But there's something in us women that makes us want to tweak our surroundings, even when we're quite happy with them.  There's always a little something that could be changed: a new picture hung on the walls, or the furniture rearranged slightly, or an accessory added somewhere.  We're always fine-tuning our environment.  And it's not just something women do, by the way.  Jeff, for example, likes to tweak stuff related to his work.  Take his business website; he's often fiddling around with it, changing things here and there, updating info, using a new way of scheduling appointments online, etc.  He's a tweaker, too--just not in household stuff like I am.  I'm pretty sure he doesn't lie in bed at night wondering what to hang on our walls.  ;-)

Back to the laundry room...  I really was satisfied with it, but then I thought, "I think I can make it a little better."  :)  I realized that one thing I didn't like about the room was how, as soon as I cleared all the dirty clothes off the floor, another item of clothing would get put there, and the pile would begin to grow again.  We do have a wonderful laundry chute that holds most of our dirty clothes, but sometimes clothes get taken directly to the laundry room, and I didn't like the messy feel that would quickly begin to develop in the room once that first item of clothing was dropped there.  My idea was to get a three-part laundry hamper to put in the laundry room so that clothing could be sorted and placed into that instead of cluttering up the floor.  When I looked online to order one, I found some nice normal (boring) hampers that would have worked fine; but then I saw these animal ones...

...and soon abandoned my plan of a normal hamper in favor of these silly ones.  Besides the way they bring a smile to my face, I also wanted them because my plan is to incorporate Josiah and David more in the ever-present laundry project; and if these funny faces make it more enjoyable for my boys, that's reason enough to have them.  I'll let them introduce themselves...

Hi, I'm a friendly duck!  What's that, you say?  You've never seen a blue duck?  Well, I have one thing to say to that:  now you have!  You know how it is with the genetic engineering they're doing these days; you just never know what's going to hatch!  Anyway, my job is to hold the darks; and this family sure has a lot of them!  I'm usually stuffed to the bill.

I'm a happy frog, and I hold the light-colored clothes.  My mouth doesn't stay shut very well, so you can always peek inside me.  See Shav's sleeper inside me?  I sure love soft cuddly clothes! 

Hello!  Mrs. Ladybug here.  I love my spots, but not the ones on the white clothes I hold.  It's a good thing nobody puts me inside that big machine across the room; it might make my spots come off, too! 

When I get my act together and do a better job of guiding Josiah and David through their daily chores, I want them to, each morning, get the clothes out of the laundry chute and sort them into the proper hampers.  I think they'll have a lot of fun with this.  I am, anyway!

Inviting colorful critters into the laundry room wasn't the only way I tweaked it.  While cleaning out and organizing the cellar recently, I came across these old crocks; and suddenly an idea burst into my consciousness.  Why don't I use them to store my laundry soap?  

I'm not one of those thrifty souls who makes their own laundry soap.  Nope, I just buy mine at the store, whatever kind is cheap.  

But rather than leaving it in the box and having that sit out on my counter, I'd much rather put it into a crock (one for the detergent and one for Oxyclean, since I've been adding a little of that to every load recently--ever since Jeff's mom was here and started doing that in the laundry) and store it that way.  It's more beautiful like that.  :)

Jeff is always kind and affirming when I tell him about the ways I've tweaked things around here, but he doesn't get too excited about such things. :)  He did, however, tell me that he really likes the fact that I put the soap in the crocks.  His reason?  Because it makes the laundry room smell so fresh.  :)