I love laundry rooms. In our last house, our laundry was in the unfinished side of our basement. So it was not a place I would want to spend a lot of time. There were spider webs and it wasn’t that bright. So I always took my laundry somewhere else to fold and sort. Now, I have a small laundry/mud room that is more like a hallway between the rest of my house and my garage. It is on my list of rooms to renovate-we’re talking ripping up the current floor, knocking out parts of walls to create cubbies for the kids and moving my washer and dryer. So it’s not the most pretty place right now but I look forward to sharing that makeover with you in the next few months.
But even though my laundry room doesn’t look as pretty as I’d like right now, it still can be totally functional and organized. When I think of laundry/mud rooms I think of efficiency. It is usually a small space where lots needs to happen. If you aren’t efficient with that space it can very quickly become unorganized and chaotic.
Today I want to share with you some tips for how to make your laundry room more lean, or efficient which will then help it become more organized and useful. Everyone has their own schedule and routine for laundry. For the five of us I probably do about 4 loads of laundry each week. The kids bring their baskets down to the laundry room and then I will do those loads that day and sometimes the next also. Then all the clean laundry is folded by my husband and I on Thursday nights. It’s our little laundry date night 🙂 We organize it in to the kids baskets and then I put it all away on Friday. So for me it’s a process that takes a couple of days but it doesn’t seem daunting at all because it’s a little at a time. When you find the routine that works for you, you can start to implement these tips to help your process run smoother.
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T I P S F O R A L E A N L A U N D R Y R O O M
1. Maximize your space. Use the space wisely, stack your washer and dryer, add shelves or wall cabinets. Hang as much on the wall as you can to give you more floor space. Look for empty spaces behind your laundry room walls to see if that space could be used. In our laundry room, there is an empty space in the garage on the other side of the wall. We plan to knock out a little of that wall and have built in lockers for the kids coats.
2. Relocate anything you can. If it doesn’t have to do with laundry or clothing-move it somewhere else. We have a small closet in our laundry room. That space is not needed as a coat closet, we can easily store our coats in a different nearby closet so that the laundry room can have more square footage. We plan to take down the walls in between the laundry room and coat closet for added space.
3. Cut down on your wardrobe-I know, this is a hard task but as you strive to make the rest of your home more efficient and lean, you will realize you don’t need as many clothes as you are holding on to. This will cut down on laundry time.
4. Add extra lighting. A bright laundry room is always better, add under mount lighting or ceiling lights.
5. Keep the decor very simple. There is not a need to decorate the laundry room like you might in the other parts of your home. There is so much clutter there naturally with clothes everywhere, any decor will just add to it. You can however be creative with wall colors in this area-like if you’ve been dying to paint a room lavender, pick a light lavender color and use it in your laundry room. You can get away with more fun colors there than in other rooms. But remember, keep the colors light, light light! These are usually small rooms and darker colors will make it feel even smaller.
6. Make a laundry space. If you don’t have a laundry room, make your laundry space as discrete as possible. If your washer and dryer are in a hallway or kitchen, cover it up with cute doors. There are so many ideas for makeshift laundry rooms on Pinterest. Just remember, in such small spaces like that, only fill your laundry (closet) with the bare essentials when it comes to doing laundry.