Is This Your Laundry Room?

Or is yours a black hole of dumping items you don’t know where to store…..

Placement of a home’s laundry room is one of the great debates when buying or designing a home.  Should it be right off the garage?  Should it be on the 2nd floor with the bedrooms in a two-story home?  Should it be off the kitchen?  Should it be right off the Master Closet?  Should it be in your home at all because who wants to do laundry anyway?!

Unless you are the Queen of England, you probably handle your own laundry.  Maybe your children are old enough to pitch in or even take over the responsibility.  If they are old enough but not helping out, it’s definitely something to look in to or at least ponder.

Laundry wouldn’t be such a chore if you had some room to move around in the laundry room, easy access to detergent or stain remover & it was bright and cheery like Martha Stewart’s laundry room must be.  So what can you do to make it transform from the dumping ground, black hole it is to a bright, cheery, breezy & inviting work space?

1.  Unload  Yep, take EVERYTHING out of the laundry room.  Even the stuff you know you want to keep in there like detergent.

2.  Prep  This space will need a serious cleaning of shelves, appliances & behind the appliances.  You may even need to clean out the dryer vent connection.  That needs to be done once a year.  A 1 hour soaking of white vinegar then bleach cleans the inside of a top loading washer.  You can do the same with a front load just by putting both in the dispenser & running a cycle.  You may even want to paint this small space a cheery color like a light yellow, pale green or sky blue .  Martha Stewart has some great paint choices for the breezy, uplifting look you want.

3.  Add  Are you missing a dry bar or a place to fold clothes right out of the dryer.  A shelf added over the front load washer/dryer can serve as a folding table.  A dry bar keeps your home free of wet, hanging clothes.  If you don’t have a lot of space for a dry bar, use a tension rod over the doorway on laundry day to keep laundry contained to one area.

4.  Organize  Organize the items that must be in the laundry room back into the space. i.e. detergent, dryer sheets, other cleaning products for your home, mops, brooms, step-stool, etc.  You may want to add some fun storage bins to hold smaller items on shelves for easier access & a cleaner look.

5.  Relocate  Anything that does not fit either due to space issues or its just not like the others i.e. your extra wine, kids art from school or pool toys need to be relocated to a new, proper home elsewhere in your house.  Once you have found a proper home for these other items, you will enjoy them so much more.

6.  Enjoy!  I challenge you to do a load of laundry in your reclaimed laundry room without enjoying it.  It might just become your little escape from the daily grind.

Check the Styled & Organized Living Twitter page or Facebook page the rest of the month for more ways on how to organize your laundry & pictures for inspiration.