Ugly Secret

The house we're currently living in has a few issues. Some of the more minor issues - like the ancient carpeting and the old toilets - we've been able to fix, but some of the more major issues are beyond an easy fix. One of my greatest annoyances with the house is that it was put on the property backwards. The front door - which opens into the living room - is all the way around the house from where anyone would park. Of course, at this point even if a person were to know that they should circle the house to get to the 'right' door, they wouldn't be able to between overgrown pathways and the stairs to the door being broken.

Instead of battling this - or wandering the waist high grasses hoping to find a 'front' door, everyone goes to what appears to be the front door: just a few feet from the parking area/driveway, nice welcoming porch, patio furniture on the porch, door bell on the side of the door. There's really no choice but to use it - if only it opened up anywhere else in the house...

Welcome to my laundry room - and the worst storage we have.

Not exactly a welcoming sight, I know. And that's after three rounds of purging (this year) and several attempts at reorganizing to make things a little more appealing. It just doesn't work.

Although in the long run, it might be worth it to replace the single shelf with a couple cabinets - as doors and multiple shelves could really help our storage needs while still being relatively attractive - at this point, that's kind of beyond my ability. So, looking for a short cut, we found a tension rod that's long enough to span the 61.5 inch opening.

Initially, we had planned on using a mounted closet rod for the sturdiness, but ultimately we wanted to go with something requiring a little less commitment - and something that wouldn't damage the walls on the off chance that Momo somehow pulled on the curtain.

I turned a flat sheet into a quick curtain, trimmed and hemmed it to the size I wanted, and within about 15 minutes we have an improved laundry / entry space.

It's not ideal, and I figure we'll make more changes down the line, but for now, I'm just happy not to be staring at all those boxes every single time I come into the house - or walk through the hallway there.

After a week of living with it, I was beginning to think that it wasn't that great of a change: it's a little bulky, it makes the space seem a little smaller, all kinds of negativity. Yesterday I had pulled the curtain more open while I was doing laundry, and happened to come into the house from outside while it was pulled out of the way and I am now even more firm in my opinion that while it's not ideal, it is so much better than seeing all the boxes. As a temporary fix (that might not be so temporary), I think this is going to work very well.