Laundry Room Organization

One of my readers, Kim S., e-mailed me with a request for pictures of my laundry room. I told my husband this, and he said, “Really? Our laundry room is certainly nothing special.”

He’s right, it’s not. It’s just a typical, dingy, unfinished basement laundry room, and really, it’s pretty darn ugly.

However, because it’s the only real storage room in the house, we’ve taken advantage of every bit of available space, and that’s what I want to share with you.

Here are the famous laundry room shelves, which you’ve heard me refer to a million times:

We store our bulk-purchased groceries and household supplies here. Whenever we’re out of something upstairs, we just go shopping in the basement! We recently did our winter stock-up at our favorite scratch and dent store, which is why the shelves are so packed right now.

We store our luggage and holiday decorations under the stairs, behind the washer and dryer.

All of the boxes are neatly labeled,

and my husband pounded nails into the backs of the stairs, so that we could hang things, like Easter baskets and decorative garlands.

I also stash larger kid gifts that won’t fit in my gift box here. So far, the kids haven’t figured out my not-so-clever hiding spot.

Here are my washing machine and dryers:

I have two dryers, because my husband noticed that in the winter, when I couldn’t use my outside clothesline, I was always waiting for the dryer to catch up so I could put another load in the washer. He stopped at a garage sale on his way home from an appointment one day, and bought the white, GE gas dryer on the right, for a mere $75. At first I thought that two dryers were an extravagance, but now I don’t know what I ever did without them.

I keep old towels, destined for the rag bag, on top of the dryers, to help keep them clean.

The ice cream bucket full of dryer lint is waiting to go out to the compost bin. I use the little basket to store bleach pens, scissors, a small scrub brush, stain removers, etc. so that I don’t have to sift through a pile of clutter to find what I need. The little shoe box is full of clothespins, for my indoor clothesline.

My husband stapled 4 rows of heavy-duty twine to the rafters, so that we can still hang laundry in the winter (see Cakesie’s little mug at the bottom left? She’s always underfoot!)

On this little diagonal wall, next to the dryer, my husband put up a series of hooks. I use them to store my gift bags (recycled, of course). They are organized by occasion – Christmas, Birthday, all-occasion, and other holidays, like Halloween and Valentine’s Day.

My husband also stapled twine across the wall studs, so that we could store rolls of clearance-priced gift wrap between them (the pink container was purchased for $1 at a garage sale. We use it for cat food storage).

I bought these plastic, stacking storage blocks for $1 at a garage sale. I use them to store small gift boxes, and a Rubbermaid container with scissors, tape and other package-wrapping paraphernalia.