Laundry rooms come in many shapes and sizes. It can be a unit in your kitchen, inside a closet or a dedicated room. No matter the size of your space, an organized laundry room helps make washing and drying your clothes less of a chore.
Doing laundry sucks. There, I said it. But until you can afford to throw things out after one use, you are stuck doing it. The key to getting it done fast and as pain free as possible is organization.
And that all begins with evaluating the space you have and how you use it.
Someone that has a large family and does laundry everyday has very different needs than someone that lives alone.
Someone that has a dedicated laundry room as opposed to a unit in a kitchen can shut their door when it is messy. Not so much for someone that has to cook and eat in the same room as wash clothes.
Someone that has a lot of clothes that require special handling or ironing needs different things as opposed to someone that shoves everything in the dryer.
Here are a few things to consider before you dive into organizing your laundry room:
- how often do you do laundry?
- how much laundry do you do?
- do you hang or dryer dry?
- do you like to fold in your laundry room?
- do you have a lot of sorting to do beforehand?
- how many people/beds are there in the house?
- do multiple people do laundry or is that one’s person’s task?
Once you understand your needs, you can set up your laundry room accordingly. It helps if you right down your needs and requirements so that you don’t get distracted into organizing your room in a way that does not work for you.
Now that you have your list in hand, let’s get to work.
Here are some simple laundry room organization ideas:
1. Create the Space
Regardless the size of your space, the key is to use it wisely. Think up and around. Cupboards above machines, door hanging shelves, collapsible tables or drying racks are all great ways to use all the available areas to your advantage.
Using your list of needs, decide on which items would serve you best in your laundry room.
2. Assign Everything a Home
Organize each area according to type and need. If you have a cabinet for storing laundry essentials, use dividers and clear containers with labels. If you store brooms and mops in your laundry room, use a wall organizer.
Label, label, label. Especially if you have multiple people to laundry in your house. Make it abundantly clear where things are and where they go back.
3. Keep Separate Laundry Bags
To make doing laundry easy and quick, keep separate laundry bags – one for whites and the other for colours. And if you can manage, you can even have a separate one for your delicates and one for your linen. So, all you will need to do is reach into that laundry bag and toss everything into the machine, without having to spend time sorting and separating.
Other sorting ideas include:
- towels
- bed linens
- sport wear
If you don’t have room in your laundry room for sorting bags, look around your house for other opportunities. For example, my towel laundry basket is in my linen closet. Everyone tosses their used towels in it. It makes it so easy to do a towel wash. Plus eliminates fuzzies on clothes if you do them together.
4. Keep Items you use Regularly Handy
Like an iron and board and drying rack. Whatever you use a lot should be quick and easy to access. If they are not, then you need to re-arrange things. You should not have to dig to find the iron when you need a shirt doing ASAP.
If you have a lot of clothes that belong on hangers, use a wall hook supplied with empty hangers. It is so much easier to hang the clothes as they come out of the dryer than folding them to take them to the closets to be hung.
5. Make the Laundry Room Look Nice
The reason doing laundry seems like a chore is because laundry rooms tend to look drab and dreary. So, transform it into an appealing and relaxing zone.
- Add a small vase with fresh/artificial flowers.
- Put up framed pictures, wall art or signs.
- If there are windows, hang pretty curtains.
- Use pretty magnets on the machines.
- Put up a small whiteboard to jot down things that you may be running out of.
- Hang a handy stain removal guide
- Use small containers to hold clothes pegs or collect pocket change or sole socks and mitts.
Use these easy to do steps to liven up your laundry room and make washing clothes easy and fun. With a presentable and welcoming laundry room, other family members, too, may be motivated enough to take on the task every once in a while. So, give your laundry room a facelift and enjoy the results that come with it.