Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Laundry Room Shelves/Organization

If you are like me I am always trying to find a way to keep up with laundry. I am OK with washing it and can easily keep up with that, but it is the folding and putting it away that I fall behind on.
I was talking to my mother-in-law about this and she suggested a solution that her sister used. Her sister had a laundry basket for each person in the family. As she took the clothes out of the dryer she would sort the clothes into each person's basket. Then when she had a small window of time she would take 1 person's clothes to their room and would fold the clothes from their basket and put it away. Also if she hadn't gotten to folding the clothes she could go to one specific person's basket and get them a shirt.
I loved the idea that instead of spending hours folding, sorting and putting away all of the clothes away in different rooms, you can be more organized and finish folding and putting away the clothes as you have time.
The only problem with getting a basket for each person in our family is we don't have a huge laundry room and you walk through the laundry room to get to the garage so I can't block the walk way. I looked into organizers, but everything was too big or too small. The more I got to thinking our ceilings are really high. The builders had built one shelf above the washer and dryer, but there was a lot of wasted space above and below.
Before:
So I looked at how they made the shelf and duplicated one below it.
Here are the shelf supports.
I bought some particle board and painted it white to put on the supports.
I just put in temporary cardboard dividers to see if I liked the system before doing permanent dividers.
I built the original shelf about 3 months ago and have liked the system so much I ended up building a second shelf recently with my mom's help. That way I could store more stuff above the laundry sorting shelves. This picture I took at the end of my laundry day so I haven't had a chance to fold any clothes yet, they are there waiting, but organized when I find time. I have really liked the cardboard dividers because I can move the size of the shelf around and make more room if one person has more clothes that week, even thought it doesn't look all that professional.

To save even more space I bought a foldable laundry basket that I could store on the side of the washer. Similar to this.
That way I can transport each person's clothes to their room when I get a chance to fold them. If you are looking for a way to organize your laundry room, I highly suggest this system.

1 comment:

  1. Nice! Now I just need to get a wall in my laundry room! LOL!

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