Laundry Room Organization

Happy Saturday my friends, today is the first post in a series of home organization/decor and I could not be more excited to share this with you!  Every Saturday for the next few weeks, we will highlight a different room/area in our room that we have organized to become more functional for our growing family. With the beginning of a new year, everyone looks to purge and simplify their lives and usually that begins with decluttering the home and the beginning of spring cleaning. Aaron and I's home is about 1500 square feet ,with three bedrooms and 2 baths. It is a pretty standard starter home and has really been good to our little family. However, the builder of this house did not have storage in mind when he was building it and because of that we have had to become thrifty with utilizing the most of our spaces. Aaron and I have really worked on organizing and decluttering our home in order to make the most of the space we have. All items I have discussed below are linked in the descriptions and if you click the hyperlink it will take you directly to the product. I will also post all items in one place on my LiketoKnowit.app as well.

One of the areas in our home that needed some attention was the laundry room. Our laundry room is just big enough to walk into, with the washer on the left side and the dryer on the right. It has one metal shelf above the washer and dryer for storage and a place for hangers below, it a very traditional laundry room. We used the upper shelf to house all of our cleaning supplies and usually had our laundry detergent on top of the dryer. When we first moved in we started to accumulate all kinds of random pieces of junk and slowly but surely the shelf became a cluttered mess. I was buying Windex and Lysol when we had 2 bottles already, but had no idea because we couldn't see anything. It also didn't help that my 5'2'' frame wasn't tall enough to see what was up there and I could just barely push things onto the shelf on my tippy toes. Eventually this grew weary and I couldn't handle it anymore and realized it was time to give the laundry room some much needed TLC.

The first thing I did was pull everything down off the shelf to take inventory of what we had. I then separated these piles into things that were staying and trash that needed to be disposed of. This is always my first step when organizing an area in my home because it allows me to to start with a clean slate. Once I had everything off the shelf I began putting like items together. All of the laundry detergent, stain fighters, fabric softeners, etc... they all went in one pile. Then I moved to cleaning supplies, vacuums, mop, brooms, and finally miscellaneous items like WD40 and the random leather shoe protector that we had no idea was there ha.

I realized quickly that our laundry room lacked floor space but there was quite a bite of unused wall space, that could be utilized for storage. I got on my favorite go-to site for storage, Amazon prime of course, and typed in laundry room storage. One of the first things I saw was this Home-It Mope and Broom Holder. This piece attaches to the wall and gets broom, mops, pretty much anything with a handle off of the floor in order to maximize floor space. We also store our vacuum in the laundry room and luckily we received this Dyson Vacuum for Christmas, and it comes with its own storage mount to remove it from the floor. Just this simple step made a huge difference by freeing up the already tight floor space!

Next thing I saw on amazon for laundry room storage was this 3 Tier Rolling Laundry Cart that was designed to fit in between the small space between your washer and dryer. This storage piece is genius, it was wasted space that now had a purpose and was the perfect place to store items I reach for everyday. I use the rolling cart to store all of my cleaning supplies and and love this little storage item. I am vertically challenged, so using a step ladder every time I needed to clean something was a pain, so this has really alleviated that problem. 

Finally it was time to tackle the miscellaneous items and items that were to large or too bulky to either be hanging on the wall or stored in the rolling cart. That is where these baskets came in handy. I knew I wanted uniform storage baskets on the top shelf to help hide and store items I wanted out of sight, but that would also be visually appealing to the eye when you walked in.  I got this set of four with two larger baskets and two smaller baskets and all four fit perfectly on top of the shelf. Everyone has items, or clutter that are necessary, but can easily junk up a space. The trick is to store them in baskets or organizing containers that hide the mess. I took all of my laundry detergent and items I use for stain removal and things like that and placed them in one of the larger baskets. This is random but I hate seeing rolls of toilet paper and paper towels out in open storage, I know I am OCD, so I used one of the baskets as storage for our extra rolls of paper products. Next I used the second larger basket for items like bleach, cleaning towels, our extra empty spray bottles, Grove products and other random items like that. Finally the last smaller basket is used to hold rubbing alcohol, Peroxide, larger containers, and the extra attachments for the Dyson.

I also added a few decor pieces to the laundry room to make the space feel more like an additional room in our home, rather than just an eye sore that holds our appliances. This step is completely unnecessary and did not add to any of the functionality of the room, but I do spend a lot of time in the laundry room, so I appreciate having something pretty to look at while I am in there. This is the only room in the entire house that is not a neutral paint color, so it was fun to play with some decor pieces to add a pop of excitement. These faux greenery pieces are from TJ maxx , similar here, and used to be on our mantle in the living room. They had been sitting in our garage since I was no longer using them and I thought they would be perfect in the laundry room to add an alive element. I love to shop my own stash of decor pieces and move them around in different rooms and utilize them in different ways to bring an old space back to life. Lastly I added this little area rug from Target and these small succulent pictures from TJ Maxx, similar linked here, to tie the whole room together. 

Even the smallest of spaces can be transformed to bring some tranquility and spark joy, to make something as mundane as doing laundry not seem so boring! I hope you all enjoyed this first addition to the home organization/decor series here on the blog and hopefully it inspired you to transform an unexciting, cluttered room in your home as well. Small, inexpensive changes can make a huge impact in making every area of your home feel more like your safe space. I would love to hear what areas of your home that you are wanting to organize and declutter and I would love to help in anyway I can! Make sure you are subscribed to the blog, so you can get an email notification every time I upload a new post. This  new home organization series will be posted every Saturday! Also thank you to everyone who participated on my instagram stories yesterday, you have no idea how much it means to me to get your feed back and have you interact with me there! Thanks for stopping by today and I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

Be Well,

Katelyn

Joshua 24:15- "As for me and my house, we shall serve the Lord."