My bestfriend, Sofia’s Auntie Lindsay knows we love crafts, so when she walked through the front door with not one but two life-size boxes Sofia and I both found ourselves running in circles of excitement. Her for the glue gun and me for supplies and my laptop; Hello Pinterest!
We looked at millions of creative and fun options, from castles, to tunnels, to a car, plane and boat, but it’s actually funny how Sofia was head strong on making a Wash Machine as soon as she saw the inspiration in Pinterest. It does make sense though, her most favorite thing to do is play dolls, and with 4 babies always on the go the laundry and diaper do pile up as you can imagine. So her logic on what she wanted to do with these boxes makes complete sense; we got started right away, I mean can you imagine life without a laundry set with 4 children?
INSTRUCTIONS
She made it very clear she wanted stackers, with the wash machine on top and dryer below, and so it was. I separated the two on the inside with the cardboard lid from the second box, duct taping it secure. For the doors we used the circles that we had cut out and the window on the washer was made from a ziploc bag glued into place. The knobs were recycled lids from juice containers and fruit pouches that we sprayed gold (because everything gets to be gold; proof 1, proof 2). The one knob that actually moves was made from a fruit pouch. We removed the pouch, cutting around it and simply pushed the entire mechanism into the box. Using the lip, we glued a triangle pointer on top and colored it black. This little knob is “very important” as it controls both the washing and drying speeds.
Sofia loves pressing buttons, because what 4 year old doesn’t, this is where the “how many minutes” came into play. I felt the whole process needed more button pushing to make the whole doing-of-laundry feel more real for her. We made the keypad with blue clear pebbles people use in their fish tanks, getting ours from the dollar store. Writing the numbers directly on the box with a black felt, we glue-gunned a pebble on top of each which magnified the number and made it easy to read, and press of course.
…and now our weekends are both filled with laundry, that and fighting over laundry baskets.
I just saw this on Craftgawker. It’s brilliant! Love the pic with the kitty. Sofia looks like she takes her laundry duties very seriously!
I just stumbled upon this! Great work.
My 3yr old is asking for a washing machine and I thought I’d be supermom if I could build her one!
How did you do the knobs? Especially the movable ones? That’s the part that’s got me stomped! Thank you!
You totally can! The knobs I just made with lids from milk containers or water bottles. I just glued them in place but to make them move you would need to glue a stick in the centre of the inside of the lid an poke that through the box. Then you could easily spin them.