I am firmly in the camp that believes having things too sterile is actually bad for your immune system. My great aunt, who lived to be 101 and a half, could eat things out of the refrigerator that none of us young people would touch. Her resistance to bacteria was good and built up over time and exposure. All that to say that if you are not phobic about what lurks in your laundry room, then having it serve mutliple purposes can be fabulous. If you, like several of my friends, constantly use hand sanitizer and try to eradicate every lurking germ, then you are not likely to be happy with having other activities happen next to where you wash soiled clothes. We recently did a renovation and decided to turning an old garage apartment into a multi-function space. It includes a laundry area, mudroom, pantry, office nook, and a small bathroom. The mudroom's French doors are where a garage door was 50 years ago and now open onto a smallish front porch that connects to our driveway. The mudroom is modest in scale. The doors let in lots of light. It has a little stool for the kids to sit down to take off their shoes, a low shelf for storage, several pegs for school bags, coats, and my cloth shopping bags, a small table for important papers the kids bring home, and a small tower with basket that hold sunglasses, a brush, pony tail holders, mittens, hats, etc. A large pantry opens at one end and the kitchen is up two steps at the other. From there a wide hallway opens into the laundry area in the middle section. The washer and dryer are front loaders and mount under a long counter with a deep sink at one end. There are cabinets above the laundry area that hold detergent, stain stick, vases, cleaning supplies, unmatched socks, tools we use often, seeds, etc. Eventually I hope to add a wall mounted drying rack to a space I left blank. I have had my eye on one in the Ballard Design catalog, but cannot yet spend the $$, The ironing board is mounted into the opposite wall and has a lamp, an intergrated plug, hook for hanging a couple of items, and a place to store the iron, hot or cold. The whole set up works beautifully for sorting, folding,and ironing laundry. Seems everyone is willing to help with the laundry now, because it is a pleasant place to be and well laid out. We have deep shelves built into a sort of wall cubbie. There we store two large laundry baskets on each shelf. Dirty clothes are on the bottom shelf, clean on the next. We also use the other cubbies for beach towels, pool bags, my "gift closet" and clothes that need to be donated or mended go on upper shelves, as they are culled during washing. My children never want to get rid of anything, so I have to sneak these out of their sight. I use the laundry sink for flower arranging, cleaning out coolers after a trip, and sometimes as a place to store wet dishcloths and dust rags (on a little rack that fits inside the sink) so they don't stink up the rest of the laundry until it is time to wash a whole load. The countertop serves mutliple purposes too. When clean laundry is put away it becomes a place for weighing food for our monthly co-op splits, drying art works, starting seeds in trays, polishing silver, etc. Instead of a powder room, we located a small, but full bathroom directly across from the laundry work space. Though we often set up a drying rack in the large shower, especially in winter, it is great this time of year to come in from the garden or back from the city pool and be able to take off dirty or wet clothes, hop in the shower, and throw stuff in the wash without tracking through multiple rooms. Towards the back of the house, still open to the laundry area, I have a built in desk with large triple windows over my work space. My computer, filing cabinets, and office supplies are there and it overlooks the prettiest part of our back yard. When I finally finsih cleaning out my boxes of files, we will be able to get to the door that leads out to the terrace. Other than the kitchen where I spent most of my time and even with boxed, it is still a nice space. If I had it to do over again, there would only be two changes I would want to make. First, I might make it a little bigger, as the children always want to be here with me and I would love to have a work space for them too. Second, I would add a bar for hanging up clean clothes until we take them upstair. I asked the cabinet contractor to do this as part of his work, but it didn't happen. I have since decided I would prefer the drying rack for now anwyway, but if I had more room, I would add a small closet or hanging bar. Happy deciding! Perhaps I can post some photos soon.

Cooper - I currenlty use Charlie's Soap and for the most part don't have to mess with the sink at all but in the furture with kids someday. . . My Mom was forever getting stains out from us! Nanny! I know... *hanging head in shame* I was holding off on paint because an electrician was to do some work for us and take care of the light at the same time. He's no longer going to be doing the work. We still need the electrical stuff done but it's been put on the back burner for the time being. I might as well paint now and deal with the bathroom light later. I'll try and hurry to get that painted! For those of you who don't know, Nanny2a made my shower curtain and she did an awesome job. I'm very pleased with it. Anyone who lacks in sewing skills, such as myself, should talk to her about making your stuff. Get her started with an online sewing business. You've all seen her work on here before. It's pretty amazing. :) Kmcg - What I saw on that site looked cool. I need to check out the videos yet. Thanks! Was the $250 for something that size? Annk - You mean wrap it around the sides of the door onto the back? I'm trying to figure out how you'd do that around the edges, top and side. I think it would wrap but I can't picture it. I'll take a photo of the paper tonight on the roll so you can get a better idea. If you wanted to see it now, if you click on Rhoda's blog, on the right side down a little ways there's word links you can click on. I think the 2nd or 3rd one says beadboard wallpaper. You can also do a search right on her site about it and all the projects will shows up. Tonight we have a lot of running around to do (birthday's, family members going in for surgery tomorrow, etc) but give me a day or so and I'll take a photo. Ha, Ttodd! Well ok then. When are you guys moving again? I'm excited to see all you do with your new place.

Thanks Emagineer, you're always so sweet. I do try to put little extras in the threads, like good organizing ideas, and little vignettes where appropriate. I'm always interested in those myself. Rosesstink, you're welcome! I'm redoing mine too, because of the flood. MORAL OF THE STORY: If you haven't replaced the hot and cold intake hoses behind your washing machine in the last five years, do it! They're under constant pressure and when they get old they can blow. Not the sort of thing I ever thought about before. $20 for a package of new hoses. $500 deductible to me, and thousands to the insurance company to repair the damage to my laundry room, sewing room, and garage. Plus workmen tromping in and out day after day.

Maybe keep the cabinets dark for now and try painting the walls a color that works with the floor better. Since the floor is a pink beige, how about painting pinkish walls. That would certainly fit in the category of cute. I see the pink in your floor and the yellow of your walls. BTW, back in the 60's as a teen the best dress I ever had was a dark brown dress, trimmed in pink with white polkadots as lining at the color and cuffs. Pink and brown can be very nice together. So get some paint samples and see if the pink walls could work with your other elements. The counter might need to go, unless it also has a pink undertone. But you can get a new counter for not much money, maybe even DIY with stock from Lowes or HD.