As promised, here’s more info about organizing your comings and goings. It’s a long post, so go get a snack for maximum enjoyment.

If your home is anything like mine … you looked at the ideas from the other day and thought “Yeah, that’s great Aby, but my house is in the real world. We enter and leave through the laundry room! I don’t have space for another paper clip in that room … let alone some great bin storage system like you’re talking about.”  I feel your pain. My house is in the real world too, complete with a laundry room right smack dab in the midst of where we come and go every day. I’d like the name of the architect that came up with the brilliant idea of having the laundry room also serve as the mud room. Actually, this was probably a good idea until the cost accountants came along and told the builders how much money they’d save if they just squeezed out every extra square inch from the space except what’s absolutely needed between the wall and the dryer door so that if you’re a size zero you can still turn around! Ah… but I digress.

Here’s my story … along with nuggets you can use to transform your area for coming and going … or revamp your laundry room for the fun of it all!

About two years ago, I gave my laundry room an organizational overhaul. Before the overhaul, things didn’t have convenient, designated places. Aside from accommodating dirty clothes and laundry gear like detergent, bleach, dryer sheets and the all important washer and dryer, my laundry room tried to wear many other hats as well. The washer, just inside the main access to my home, had become the landing spot for mail, purses, coats, keys and cell phones – the place to drop everything as soon as we walked through the door at the end of a long day. (Sound familiar?)

As if that wasn’t enough, we thought it’d be fun to give this tiny space a few more roles and responsibilities. It was the primary storage area for all sorts of miscellany from cleaning supplies like brooms, dust pans and the vacuum, to out of season coats, light bulbs and even the bread machine. Plus, the room housed a trash can and recycle bin just inside the door, “greeting” my upon every arrival back home after a busy day.

Wanna see a picture? Maybe I should have called this post “organizer airs her dirty laundry.” 😉

Laundry room

OK … the laundry shown *IS* clean. But just for grins, here’s another before pic.

Closet

When I decided it was time to reclaim the space, I crafted a plan. The first step was to take a good hard look at what *should* be kept in the room. If your laundry room is your comings and goings area, too, I encourage you to really take this step to heart. Which items really deserve a place in your valuable space? Talk about prime real estate. This is ultra prime!

The next step was to take action.

The large cleaning tools like mops and the vacuum cleaner were moved into a storage area in the basement. A hook was added in the garage right off the laundry room for the broom and dust pan, allowing quick and easy access without taking up precious space in the laundry room. Extra cleaning supplies also took up residence in the basement. Out of season coats found a new home in the main coat closet, near the front entrance of my house.

Once the space was pared down to the essentials, it was time to designate spots for everything that remained. Simple modifications to the room created a place for everything and an easy means for getting things into and out of their assigned spots.

The washer and dryer were pushed closer to one wall, creating enough space for a laundry sorter to be rolled into the room on laundry day. Keeping the sorter on the side of the washer frees up access to the washer and dryer, making laundry day much more efficient and enjoyable.

Laundry room after

The coat closet door and a second door were removed, improving traffic flow and access to the closet area. In other words, we could actually use the closet square footage since we could see it and get into it!

The old shelving and closet rod were removed, making way for a cubicle tower unit. Everyone in my family was assigned two storage cubbies to corral purses, school papers, cell phones, keys, gloves, and briefcases … eliminating the frantic rush through the house in search of the car keys each morning. (Yep … used to be guilty of that, too!)

Coat hooks were installed at child-height, carving out a home for coats, umbrellas and backpacks.

My hubby installed new shelving adjacent to the cubicle tower. The shelves are used for mail, bills, coupons, and reading materials. The trash can and recycle bin sit in a corner just below the new shelving, making simple work of purging unwanted junk mail.

A bucket filled with basic cleaning supplies was assigned a home on the top shelf in the laundry room.

Laundry room after

And of course, labels, labels, labels are used to help everyone know where things belong – making easy work of putting everything back in its place.