Project: Organize My Laundry Room

A few months ago I started getting antsy for a new project.  And as I always do when this mood hits, I started looking around my house to see what I could change or reinvent.  This time it was the laundry room that caught my eye.

I started thinking about this cabinet next to my washing machine that was home to a junk drawer and where we kept a dirty clothes hamper.  The top just collected junk and dust.  This is a reasonably uncluttered day for it, trust me, I've seen much, much worse.  I also realized there was wasted space above it and if I built up it would give me more storage.  So out it came.  (I saved the cabinet for another project, though it isn't done yet.)

I came up with some plans, enlisted the help of my husband (thanks Mike!) and we built this cabinet.  Now I'm organized- well, somewhat better organized, at least in my laundry room.

                               And finished!!

I have always wanted to put an ironing board in my laundry room and this gave me the opportunity to do that.  We put in a sliding shelf big enough for a mini ironing board and it works great for small ironing jobs.  There are two dirty clothes hampers on the bottom and now I get to teach my kids to sort by color.  Before the clothes were all together, so now it is nice to have the darks already separated from the whites. There are shelves for the boxes we use for clean laundry, one for each of the kids, and that keeps the baskets off the counter like they use to be.  Now I can actually sort clothes on the counter instead of just using the top of the dryer.  Nice!

Take a look at all that clear counter space while you can!  I'm sure it won't be like that much longer...

And, it matches the lockers we put in a few years ago, which have also been fabulous for controlling messes.  (As long as my kids actually take the time to put their shoes in the shoe shelves. Sigh...)

And one more thing that has helped the clutter in my laundry/mud room are these hooks.  It is just a piece of MDF wood, painted, with hooks attached.  (Super easy project, too.)   But it has been one of the most useful and cheapest things I've made.  In the winter you'll see snow pants and coats hanging on it and in the summer is dries beach towels.  Love it!

I know I'm incredibly lucky to have a handy husband, complete with tools, so we can make things like this.  But even if you can't do a project of this scope, hopefully you've at least found some potentially useful ideas.