Ch-Ch-Changes....

~We are finally beginning another fix-it-up project around here. Our house is 113 years old and we bought it as a major fixer-upper. When we first moved in we did a LOT of work. It seemed like there as no surface that we didn't paint and we had a MAJOR amount of yard/exterior work that had to be done. Then about 4 1/2 years ago we had a kitchen fire that resulted in a completely gutted/remodeled kitchen and new flooring. This go around we are working on the laundry room and a little bit of the kitchen. The floor under the kitchen is not supported well, so we will be adding some floor jacks under the kitchen. The laundry room has BIG foundation problems. It seems like the whole house shakes when the washer spins. We'll be fixing the foundation in there, putting down new sub-floor and flooring. My laundry room is HUGE by laundry room standards. It's 12x13. It currently has a full wall of cabinets and a sink in it. My husband is going to remove the sink and lower cabinet. Then he's going to install a counter that has electrical outlets all along the back (he picked it up when they did some remodeling at work. That counter will be supported by legs, so it'll function like a bar. When he's done with that I'll have all of the upper cabinets for storage and the counter will be the permanent hang out for my sewing/embroidery machines. I'm SEW excited...LOL Those are the definites. There is also a possibility that we will be adding a hallway and pantry. Currently you have to go into the laundry room to get to what will be the den/office and we don't have a pantry (one of the things I miss about our smaller house). When you walk into the laundry room you look straight at a floor to ceiling cabinet. We will pull that out and build a pantry there. This will free up some cabinet space and enable me to bring my 5 gallon buckets of wheat, rice, etc. into the house (it's currently stored in the outside storage room). The door to the den is on the left, so we will add a wall to the right with a pocket door to get into the laundry/sewing room. That'll take that room down to about a 9x12, but I still think that is a generously sized room and our washer and dryer are stackable. We haven't been able to stack them because of the floor, but once that problem is fixed we'll be able to free up some floor space that way. Probably even enough to be able to leave the iron and ironing board set up, which will be super convenient for my sewing projects. I'm not excited about all the work and how disruptive it's going to be, but I'm EXTREMELY excited about the end result! ~Also, this process is going to necessitate a change in our laundry habits. This is probably ridiculous, but we have always taken all of our laundry to the laundry room, sorted it and kept it piled up there until it got caught up. If you have a family, you know how often all of the laundry actually gets caught up. This little system that we had mean that there were always baskets of dirty clothes in there. My Pastor and his wife have 12 children (10 still living at home). There 16 year old daughter recently volunteered to take on the laundry. Her mom told me that she had come up with a system that was really working well, so I asked her about it. It's such a simple idea, but I never thought of it. She has each person keep their dirty clothes in a hamper in their room. When she is ready to do laundry, she has one person bring their clothes and she finishes with all of those before she starts anyone else's. I was also told by another friend how much having color catchers had saved her time doing laundry. Carbona has a reusable one and Shout has disposable ones. She said she had stopped sorting clothes and just using the color catcher. I'm going to be doing a combination of those things. We separated all of the dirty clothes into which room they belonged in and sent them back there today. Obviously all the people will have their laundry in their rooms. The bathroom hamper will house towels and washcloths from the kitchen and bath and there will be one hamper in the laundry room for whites. I think this is going to work really well. I'm also thinking I'm going to have the kids be responsible for their own laundry. The already help, but only with my prompting. The girls will be responsible for theirs from start to finish and Mason will help me with mine and I'll help him with his. I'm very excited to have a new system and really think it's going to help tremendously. What about all of you (my 2 or 3 readers, anyway...LOL). Do any of you have big changes happening in your homes?