31 days to make your rental a home// dealing with the elephant.

have you ever had an elephant in your apartment?? you know what i mean, a unbelievable obstacle that you try to ignore, but when you really sit down and think about it, it makes you want to cry??

i had one of those. it was a washer and dryer that sat in my living room.

you read that right ... in my living room. [i may be getting a little misty-eyed thinking back not-so-fondly.] the short version is that we have a brand new stackable w/d pair that are "apartment" sized, but they're front-loaders, and apparently the "newer" apartment size because even though i spent weeks finding a small apt in tucson that had w/d hookups, when we unloaded them as we moved in, it became abundantly clear that the little closet nook just simply was not large enough to hold our new w/d.

call me stubborn. call me hard headed, but i'd done the laundry mat thing for years when i was single, and i'd done it for a year and a half when we were married. i was not going back. and i was not selling my beautiful, shiny w/d on craigslist. so, we hooked them up just outside the doorframe of the closet, and they sat in our livingroom, against one wall.

here's a floorplan sketch to give you an idea of our apt, and the w/d situation...

[this was rental #4, and only 450 sq ft of living space. the proportions are probably off, but you get the gist.]

so anyone who walked into our apartment saw our washer and dryer, right there, in the middle of our living room. [don't even get me started on how it partially blocked the way to the bathroom & bedroom.]

and after sitting on my couch, looking at it for a year, and feeling like i lived in some crappy first apartment or college dorm, i finally got an idea for how to deal with it. fabric had always been the tool i thought it'd use, but the draping was the part i was nervous about.

the simple answer was 3M hooks. i placed them on the top of the dryer and sewed a light weight plastic ring to the fabric. i hooked it over the hook, and voila...

matching fabric in the doorway of the hook-up cubby and a stand-alone mirror in between, and i had some decent camouflage.

now, was this fix going to get me on the front cover of elle decor?? nope. but did it make me grin like i was on drugs for months afterwards?? you bet your bottom dollar. it made me feel like i had slayed my dragon. er, elephant. ok, maybe slaying elephants isn't where i wanted to go with this metaphor...

it took me a year, and a constant willingness to live with an elephant in my living room, and an unwillingness to give up on creatively thinking of a solution. and it paid off.

what about you, kind reader?? [that's my austenian address right there.] are you currently living with an elephant?? how might you slay your elephant??



PLEASE NOTE:: no actual elephants were harmed in the writing or preparing of this blog post. i neither have slayed any actual elephants, nor do i condone the slaying of elephants. thank you.

******************

to see the previous 31 days' posts, check out day 1, where i've got a running list. :)