Come to Order Monday: The Laundry Room

When we built our house I did not think too much about the laundry room. We came from an 80 year old house where the laundry was in the basement with no proper shelving at all. The architect's plan for a main floor laundry with two closets and a sink with an under-cabinet seemed like a huge luxury. The laundry room is just off our garage and mudroom. It was a big improvement from the old house, but after a few years I realized that I should have given a bit more thought to the room. I do practically live in there after all! I added wallpaper, upper cabinets,and even some decor. I love the look of the laundry room. It truly is set-up beautifully for the room's purposes, which are: 1) to clean and fold laundry, 2) store cleaning supplies, 3) house out of season or bulky items that would otherwise go into our mudroom (no need for snow suits to be in the cubbies year-round), and finally 4) store a few extra items if we buy something on sale.

Even though the systems in place do work, a year later, the room needed a wee tune-up. Here is how it looked Sunday morning:

The pictures actually look worse than the reality as the closets and cabinets are (of course) closed at all times. Anyhow this gives you a glimpse into how even a well-plan and organized space can slip into a bit of chaos after a year of hard-use. Since one of my resolutions goals is to organize the house, I figured this was a good space to start. I tried to consider the purposes of the space listed above, remove anything that was not serving those purposes, weed out unnecessary items (like boots that no longer fit my kids), and group like-items in meaningful ways.

It took a bit longer than I thought it would because I became sidetracked. I noticed that I had a stack of paper plates that made no sense being in the laundry room. This led me to the kitchen to put them away. This made me realize that my appointed paper goods drawer was a mess, which made me empty the whole thing out. While doing so, I saw these little plastic cups. That made me think I should dole out some almonds in little cups for snacks this week. When I finished that, I turned my attention back to the paper-goods drawer. Now it was lunchtime. So, I made lunch. Then I finished the drawer.....

Finally it was back to the laundry room, where I focused on weeding out superfluous items and logically grouping everything. I ended up with this:

If you are wondering what is in the baskets--they hold seasonal items that we may need (one is sunscreen and bugspray, another has extra hats and gloves, another has flip-flops and sunglasses). I rotate the baskets, bringing the current season's needs down for easy reach. They have worked perfectly and have not needed reorganization. Our cleaning products are about 80% organic and chemical free. I have been buying method, honest company, and some other green products for several years. I even tried making my own, which is why the Dr. Bronner's is there. We still have one bus tub of old stuff that we are using until its gone and for really dirty days :).

Next week I am going to tackle our cubbies and mudroom as I work towards touching up the whole house!