**UPDATE: This sign totally stays on the dishwasher in our new house. Despite the helpful comments, I had given up on this project until I stuck it on our new dishwasher. Thanks for the help everyone!**

Jacob and I aren’t the cleanest people in the world. Shocker, I know, right? We love to cook, but we don’t love the mess it makes in the kitchen. We have a bad habit of letting the dishes pile up when they could simply be placed in the dishwasher. Too often we blame it on not knowing whether the dishes in the dishwasher are dirty or clean (it’s not like we could simply open the door and look or anything). One day, after discovering the door to the dishwasher was magnetic I came up with the brilliant* (I thought) idea of a dirty/clean sign we could hang on the outside to keep us on top of the dirty dishes situation.  I grabbed an old magnet from our fridge, some cute scrapbook paper, and mod podge.

I printed off the letters to DIRTY and CLEAN in a cute scrapbooking font and got to work.

Why yes, that is a Razorback basketball schedule from 2008. We like to keep reminders of mediocre sports seasons in our kitchen.

First, I applied a coat of mod podge to the magnet and carefully covered each half with a piece of scrapbook paper. I find it’s easier to put the whole sheet on the magnet and then trim off the excess.

I glued on the letters with more Mod Podge making sure they were upside down from each other so the magnet could be flipped.

and finally, added another layer of Mod Podge on top to seal everything.

Ta DA!
Clean
Dirty

Works like a charm right?

Not quite. For some reason, it just slides down the front of the dishwasher when I slap it on. Not. Cool. I had to tape it to the dishwasher just to get these pictures, and it still didn’t want to stay on!

Other magnets will stick and this one sticks fine to the fridge.

Why the aversion to our dishwasher, little sign?

The Mod Podge layers really aren’t that thick.

Crafters out there, what did I do wrong?

Have no fear, I have since recovered from my crafting failure and am now ready for another long weekend. Jacob and I are in  Little Rock  because he has a sales meeting today. We were already going to be in town for the Razorback game on Saturday, so why not make it another 3 day weekend, right?  I’m planning to squeeze in some time with a dear friend and her little man as well as my unborn niece or nephew.

*Jacob promptly informed me that his grandmother had a sign exactly like that when he was growing up. Guess I should have taken that as a sign that I wasn’t as smart as I thought, and that my project was doomed from the start.