She Cleaned up Nicely

Living in a small house feels really great for me at this stage in my life. I  love the fact that there are no stairs or multi bathrooms to clean. One level navigating is such a breeze. In this part of the world it also means there is no basement, so the challenge is storage and the fact that everything is in sight including the laundry room. It forces you to get organized and keep hording at bay.

It also means that everything that once got relegated to the basement, now gets relegated to the garage (shed in Australian). Since most sheds here in small town Queensland are not much more than a giant metal building lurking somewhere in the back yard, they are not the most convenient spot to store anything you actually care about. Sure, they are great for tools and garden gear and your car, but they are not airtight or temperature controlled, so they get extremely hot inside. There is also the added feature of scurrying geckos and spiders and all things creepy and crawly (waiting for the day when I see a snake curled up on my car hood (bonnet in Australian). Whenever I do retrieve a box or something from the shed, I carefully inspect the item for life forms. It keeps me on my toes I suppose. That sounds better than freaked out Canadian on constant vigil for Huntsman spiders.

But, back to the small space challenge. The laundry area in this house is also the back entrance to the house and serves as the pantry and linen closet and is adjacent to the toilet (water closet), so you can see that it is a high traffic zone here at Deb and Steve's Tropical Oasis. It was also tied for first place with the kitchen for the most dated and ugly space in the house. It also seemed like a good place to begin renovating. There was nothing we could do with the actual physical space in terms of expanding it, but there was plenty we could do to improve the use of what space was available. There was room to add shelving and closed storage and with a few repairs to the floor and fresh paint, new lighting, new door hardware, updated taps and a new laundry sink, it could certainly be revived and transformed into a more functional and visually pleasing zone in our humble abode. 

BEFORE

The highly visible location and high traffic zone in this house has gone from dingy and utilitarian to fresh and clean and functional with a bit of added kitsch that definitely agrees with my positive chi now. What was once an eyesore and a room that I hoped people would not notice is now a space that actually feels happy to me.

AFTER

Let's just hope a Huntsman family doesn't want to move in to new digs.