Spring Cleaning - Utility Room, Get In Line!

It's crazy to think about, but we've lived in our house for almost 10 months now. In some ways that seems like such a short period of time to have accomplished all the changes we've made to our house. In other ways, it seems like way too long of a time to have let some of the minor projects slide. Our Utility Room was one of those minor 'I'll get to this soon' little projects that somehow kept getting pushed to the back of my mind. 

When we moved in, there were a lot of people helping us (thanks y'all!) and so for a while unpacking consisted of me say 'that box goes in the first bedroom, that box goes in the kitchen' etc. Well, the stuff that got thrown in the Utility Room kind of just stayed there...aka I never fully unpacked/organized it. It's been bothering me for a while now, but every time I started to work on it, something else seemed more important. This past Monday I took a day off of work to do house stuff and I decided that I just had to get the Utility Room in line.  So, here is our before picture:

I know, it doesn't seem like a HUGE mess, but it's been this way for a while and everything in there is kind of in the 'I don't know where to put this so I'll put this here' category. 

In this corner we have some cleaning supplies along with who knows what (why is there a piece of wood? your guess is as good as mine!):

Along the wall we have a box and tub that never got unpacked:

I wont bore you with the details, but I went through all this stuff item by item and either found them homes or threw it out. Then I cleared everything out of the room and mopped the floor. After all of that was done it felt SO much nicer (and bigger) in there.

After the cleaning was out of the way, it was time for the organizing. While most of the stuff that used to be in this room got thrown out or moved to the garage, the broom/mop/etc. did need to come back in, and I didn't want to just stand them in the corner long term. 

I headed to Home Depot and picked up this little guy for only $14:

This storage system was with the garage organizational stuff, but it's not as heavy duty as most of the garage organizers. I think it's perfect for my use.

It comes in four parts, so you can use all or a combination of some of the strips. I only need two for this project, so I'll have to figure out where to use the other two. Maybe in the garage or in another closet...we'll see.

I wont go through the whole instillation process, but let me give you some pointers. 

I drew a level line on our wall in pencil to act as a guide. I don't own one of those nifty rulers with the level built in, but I made do:

(I also cleaned off that ugly brown smudge - Gross!)
Next I held the storage system in place and used a 1/8" drill bit to drill a hole in each spot that requires a screw. 

These smaller holes are guides. Where there is a stud (wood post behind drywall) the tiny hole creates a nice little straight path for your screw to follow during install. Where there is not a stud, you can really tell (drill goes through wall SUPER easy and creates a lot of white dust). In these spots you know you need to install drywall screws. Almost every hole I drilled ended up needing a dry wall screw. Here's the system half installed, so you can see the pencil line and drywall screws:

And I checked my work when I was done - everything is level! Hooray!

The system comes with a bunch of S hooks and little pegs to move around wherever you need them. It's very easy to use and I quickly had everything organized.

SO much better! Let's see the before and after:
Before:

After:

It looks way better and just feels SO much cleaner. But we've still got a list of things to do in this room. Right now, the list includes:

• Organizing shelves above washer and dryer so we are in chemical storage compliance for the adoption process
• Paint the room 
• Patch the big hole in the drywall (behind the washer, not visible right now)
• Figure out what to do with that space to the right of the back door - either thinking of installing a mud room type bench with shoe storage and hooks for coats or maybe a shelf with a clothing rod to hang wet laundry. I can't decide what we'd get more usage out of
• Install a window treatment
• Replace the water heater with a tank-less version

We've still got a lot to do in every room of our house, but at least this one is clean! It took me all afternoon (seriously longer than it seems it should have) but I'm satisfied with the result. And my little $14 organization system still has me swooning every time I walk through this room.