Day #8: Organizing the Laundry Room

Today we are going to work on organizing the laundry room.  I made over my laundry room, and got organized, a few months ago, and I can’t even begin to tell you how awesome it has been!  Having everything stored neatly {and pretty} in baskets has made doing laundry a cinch!  So today I will show you how I organized my laundry room, and I’m excited to see how you organize yours!

In my house the laundry room is directly off the kitchen, on the way to our bedroom.  It ends up being a dumping/storage station for everything: decorations, candles, extra groceries, dirty washcloths, etc.  I was so tired of looking at a mess all the time, so when I painted the laundry room, a few months ago, I decided to get organized too!

Because our house is old (built in ’65) the laundry room cabinets do not go all they way up to the ceiling, why someone would ever build it this way is beyond me!  So what I have is either wasted space or open/exposed storage.  I like to store candles and other decorations up there but I got SO tired of looking at my stuff all the time, it seriously stressed me out, because even though it was organized that fact that I could see it made it seem messy to me.  So when I was at Lowes, waiting for my paint to be mixed, I was wandering around and found some inexpensive baskets.  They were the perfect size for above my cabinets and the simple, dark straw pattern felt very clean to me.  Even better they also had them in smaller sizes so I bought a bunch of them for inside the cabinets and for my shelf below the cabinets.

1. Pull everything out of the cabinets and lay it out so you can see exactly what you have {and need to hide organize}.

2. Decide if anything needs to be tossed or stored in another place.  Once eliminating those items categorize the remaining items.  These are the categories I have in my laundry room: candles, small seasonal decorations, extra bulk groceries, batteries, light bulbs/extension cords, cleaning rags, dirty clothes and laundry items.

3. Now that the items are categorized place all items into the baskets.

Isn’t it so much better looking at a pretty basket instead of looking at all of my stuff?  The only problem now is that you might not remember what items are in each basket and you don’t want to pull down a heavy basket only to discover that it’s the wrong one!  Don’t worry I have an easy solution for that.

* I found a few small frames at Michael’s, and because I love silver, I spray painted them silver.

*Then using Microsoft Word I typed out a list of all my “categories”.  I used pink for an extra pop of color, but if I get tired of it I can always change it.

 * Next I printed and cut them out.

* Then I placed the labels in the frames and hot glued the frames to the baskets.

This is such a simple solution and it will make finding what you need so easy!  Just look at the difference that a few baskets made in my laundry room!

I can’t wait to see how you organize your laundry rooms!!!

You can find the full list of the 14 Day Challenge HERE!