The laundry room is often an overlooked area in the home.  Usually, it is the last space given attention because guests usually do not see this space, and homeowners would rather not spend too much time there, either.  But this hard-working room is a very important component in your family’s home.  Keeping this area organized and efficient is imperative to the overall efficiency of your entire household. Use the following tips to make the most of this heavily used space by considering the following:
 
    1. Use your vertical space. Hang your ironing board with your iron. Hang any brooms or other cleaning tools that you store in this space.  If you have the room, consider installing shelving from floor to ceiling for laundry baskets and use this space to sort your clothing. If you have shelving above your washer/dryer, consider adding more shelves above that shelf to keep light bulbs, paper products and other household items that you need to store.   Keep in mind that you do not have to have permanent shelving installed for this purpose. Just put a board across your wire shelves and use a store-bought smaller shelf sitting on the board to maximize your space above.
    2.  Sorting. A big frustration that people face with laundry is that they sort their laundry on the floor.  Get off the floor and make sorting a much easier job by purchasing a 3-bin rolling cart sorter.
    3. Keeping laundry manageable. One of the biggest challenges that the average family faces these days is more laundry than is reasonable.  Pull back on how much clothing your family has per season. Regulate whether or not items can be worn more than once and provide hooks to hang half-worn items. (It’s a good move for the environment, too!)
    4. Consider scheduling a dry cleaning pick-up. If your dry cleaning and dress shirts pile up until they are out of control, consider scheduling a one-a-month pick up. The dry cleaner you choose will give you a bag to put your laundry in.  All you need to do is put this on your front porch on your pick-up day.  They will return your laundry to your porch in a few days cleaned and pressed.
 
    When organizing the laundry room, as with any room, step back and consider the space as well as what containers and shelving you already have in your home.  Simplify and limit the amount of clothing that you have, and make this space clean and organized so that doing laundry is enjoyable (yes it IS possible!), rather than a frustrating chore.

Simply yours,

Debbie

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