Git'er Done or Close Enough

I want to share pictures with you all of my little clutter room.  Before we had this house built I studied as many floor plans for ideas that I could find.  This one old book from the library had floor plans with rooms set between the garage and the kitchen, almost a like a second kitchen, they called them "clutter rooms".  What a great concept!  Well, with space and money limits, something's gotta give and my clutter room is only half the size I wish it were.  This room has our utility sink, laundry, my desk, and pantry.  With so much going on, it ends up being my dumping ground.

I've started cleaning this room up many times but either gave up in frustration or got distracted by something sparkly, since the desk is where I make my jewelry!  Here's a before picture of my desk. 

 

No, this is NOT staged!  This would be my usual MO.

I'm lucky if I had 2 inches of desk to work on, ha!

So I recently got excited when Heather Bullard posted about her recently remodeled laundry room.  See where she added a pretty carpet in front of her machines and more about her lovely space here.

Now my room had been carpet free since I'd taken the piece of velco, that called itself a rug, out.  And this little old Karistan carpet was just taking up space in the garage when I decided to bring it back inside.  I first put it in front of the machines like Heather but my rolling chair kept getting caught on it.  

The rug finally gave me the final shove I needed  to clear out the room so you could actually see the floor.

This little face you see, looking around the corner on the right, is my Granma's string holder.  Love it!  My kids find it scary, can't wait for them to see it here, ha!

I just recently added that shelf just about the tops of the washer and dryer because I was so tired of fishing out hangers or socks that would fall behind the machines.  Also serves as a place for the bleach and soaps.

Would love to get some big beautiful shiny new machines, if my Mr. Wonderful would stop fixing these!  They've been around almost as long as him, 22+ years.

 

Ya, easily the busiest square footage in our house!

A few close ups of my jewelry area.

 I don't know, do I have enough sissors?!

 A few details.....

I had just some plain black cork material on the back splash of the counter desk.  Ideally,  I would put fabric here but never found exactly what I wanted.  These are Reader's Digest pages (hum, where did they come from?) stapled to the cork.  So no big expense or time spent if I do find the perfect fabric.  Even though not much of the back splash shows with all that's in front of it, the space is much brighter.

All my little chotchkies are put away and I even labeled the drawers!

Since I'd rather look at the pictures than read the words, (are you still with me here?) I cut out clear vinyl tags and 'clung' them to the drawer fronts with a little swipe of a wet wipe.

BTW, wet wipes are my new favorite 'tool' to have on the desk.  They take care of glue messes and clean figure prints or other missed grime from the vintage parts and pieces I use.

I got the idea to put corbels in the desk key hole area from a picture in a magazine, ages ago.

a little blurry, sorry!

So here's a shot of the rug that finally got me organized.  

Nothing all that special but surprisingly it really warms up the room! 

It's not the prettiest room in the house but until I decide to not do jewelry in this room, or fall out of love with all my good junk, or blow out the wall into the back yard, this is about as de-cluttered as it's gonna get in here.

What's left on the to-do list then?  Paint.....someday.....hopefully!

And then there's the mud room across the hall.....