Who knew?

This is a post about my birthday, which was back in March. Why the delay? Well, because I finally completed a project that got started then, and I have the pics to prove it.

When my husband asked me what I wanted for my birthday this year, the answer was easy.  Flowers?  No.  Dinner out?  No.  What I wanted, more than anything, was for him to give me the gift of his time.  I gave him a list of four small-ish projects that I'd been wanting to get done around the house for a while.  And he agreed!

Turns out my list of "small-ish" projects took my husband almost the whole day.  But you know what?  At the end of the day, he was really happy too, because he had checked some things off the to-do list and he had the satisfaction of accomplishment.

Ok, so to be COMPLETELY honest, the fourth task never got done.  He ran out of time after completing the first three, and he promised me the fourth task (a truly small one - installing a magnetic door closer on an old marble topped cabinet we'd refinished - whose doors forever swing open and won't stay closed) would be completed the next day.

Guess what?  The magnetic closer is still in it's packaging on top of the cabinet.  And now you understand why this was such a great birthday gift...somehow these tasks that get promised to get done end up on the to-do list forever.  Till you have a birthday and a reason to check them off the list, for real.

So what was this project he did?

Well, it turns out one of the "small-ish" (my word) projects wasn't so small.  As it turns out, it took him most of the day to do.  But oh boy, did it change my life!

Here was the problem:

Our house has a small laundry room.  I probably have four or five laundry baskets I keep in it, because I like to sort my dirty laundry in baskets of like clothing - like, white clothes in one basket, sweaty gym clothes in another, towels in another, etc.

There was never enough space for all the baskets, so they'd end up outside on the floor in the hallway, on top of the trash can, awkwardly sitting on top of each other, etc.  There just weren't places to put them.

The small laundry room had one corner that was basically non-functional.  Because our cat's litter box is on the floor (a good place for it), the rest of the corner was rendered essentially useless, since we couldn't put a table or something else in the space.

So my husband offered to build me shelves over the litter box.

I won't say that this is the most aesthetically pleasing project - I wanted shelves that could be adjusted to fit different baskets so they aren't the most beautiful - but this is a laundry room.  And now it's 100% more functional.

I forgot to take a "before" pic of just the wall and the litter box, so these two pics are from after he installed the shelf rails, but you get the idea of what it was:

Before, this was just a litter box underneath wasted wall space.

So why did it just get done?  Well, my husband installed everything in March, but the boards still needed to be painted.  Painting is always my contribution, so it was waiting on me.  Last week when my husband and son were gone for the week, I managed to locate the wall paint and (finally!) get those boards painted!

It always feels SO great to get a project completed, doesn't it?

And here's the finished product!

There are actually four shelves, and now everything fits and is off of the floor.

(And out of the hallway...)

It is amazing how great it feels to get a space organized!  Which of course begs the question: why didn't we do this eighteen years ago?  (Or even ten?)

I often think that by the time we get this house perfectly put together, it will be time to move.

But then again, if I didn't have house projects to work on, what would I be doing?

I have a feeling that my birthday request will not be changing for the rest of my life.  This birthday gift - of these projects getting done - brought me more happiness than anything else I could think of.

Yet again, if I could time travel back to ten-year-old me and tell myself that for my forty-fifth birthday I'd be getting an organized laundry room and it would fill me with joy - I'm sure I would have questioned everything about my life.

And yet, it DID fill my heart with joy.

Who knew?