Before & After: the laundry 'room'

Today I'm linking up to Kimba's DIY Day with a little facelift of our laundry closet. I dream of the day when we might have a laundry ROOM, but until then we make do with the closet at the top of our stairs. It's right behind a set of double doors across from our master bedroom:

Until recently the interior was painted sort of a creamy white, which was fine but it had really gotten banged up over the years. I wanted to freshen it up a little, and I kept seeing Green pop up all over the place, so I chose a mild green and went with it. Afterward, it looked like this:

Apparently paint can't cure all, though, because once we stacked everything back in there, it looked almost as bad as it had before!


It's not even that it was that MESSY in there, because honestly we could always find what we needed and nothing ever came tumbling down on our heads when we opened the doors. But it was just FULL and cluttered-looking. And we can't have THAT, now can we?
I had visions in my head of how the crisp green paint would look next to a whole set of dark baskets, similar to these sold by Pottery Barn:


But unfortunately those weren't in my budget. I had to look elsewhere ... and Target had some that were a similar color and the right size, but they were still too expensive in the quantity I needed. So I found these there instead, for about $7 less per basket than the dark ones:

Now don't get me wrong ... I plan to save up for and buy the baskets I originally had in mind one day. (THE VISION NEVER DIES, you know.) However, I wanted to spend just a little to make it look more pleasant each time I open those doors, and I was able to get all of these baskets and the rubber totes on the bottom shelf for under $70 (and I could only get a few of the PB baskets for that price).

I'm thinking of this as my "Spring is Coming!" color scheme, and perhaps as we enter the Fall of 2010 I'll have enough saved to buy the nicer baskets. These actually aren't quite as blindingly turquoise and lime as they look in the picture above ... they're closer to this:

But I wanted you to be able to see everything in the natural light (of my artificial light) ... you know what I mean.

And if you've seen those darker baskets anywhere for a steal, please let me know!