Organizing a Small Laundry Room

We have a rather small, not the smallest, but small none the less, laundry room and we have 6 occupants using it. There is nothing I hate more than clutter, but clutter in a small space is a nightmare for me, and on top of that I have to do the chore of laundry in this space. It hasn't been great these last several years, so much so that I have been folding on my bed.

I think I finally got this figured out!

Here's the space I'm talking about.

 

After thinking and brainstorming a long time about this I asked myself what do I hate most about my laundry room. It's stuff! Stuff on the counter, stuff on the floor, no work space. So I figured my objective is to get stuff off the counter and off the floor FOR GOOD! And make it comfortable to work in there.

I don't know about your house, but in mine clothes gets collected from everywhere. I can't tell you how many stray socks I collect from our basement every week. Then sweaters or t shirts that get left lying around. So for me step one was to make it organized to accept these items without compromising floor space.

 

I added 3 matching hampers to accept floater items at any time. One for dark, lights, and whites. I gave a lesson to my kids and husband :) that clothes on the floor is no longer an option. And when they do a dark load they can fill it in with whatever is collected in the dark bin etc.

The other issue was not having a clean workspace for folding closes. This is caused by the above articles and stray socks (ugh) that get washed with someone else's load but never seem to find it back to their closet. And calling that person to get their clothes is not really reasonable since at any given time they aren't even home. So I knew I needed better organized storage for that. So I installed one more shelf, so that I could put 6 generous baskets within reach for each person in our house. Their items can go into their basket when cleaned and they can empty it all when its full or when they do their own laundry. Yes all my kids do their own laundry but I take pity and help the boys fold. YES I LABEL STUFF This makes it easier to make everyone accountable.

 

Lastly I wanted hand towels, dish towels to have a quick and easy spot to be stored so I hung the undercounted baskets (in First photo above) to the underneath side of the counter. I actually had these laying around and all it took was some small hooks turned into the underneath side of the counter. Then I labeled them too so that other people in the house can help keep things organized instead of trying to read my mind where things should go :)

 

 

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