Home Organization 101: My Laundry Room Reveal

A couple of weeks ago I stumbled across the Home Organization 101 challenge at A Bowl Full of Lemons and decided I needed to take part — at least for the week covering laundry rooms.   

My laundry room was a mess.

Here’s the before:

I know…it’s embarssing.

Here’s the after:

So much better! (Yes, I know my bottle of detergent is not all gussied up in a pretty container, but, hey…the point here is TIDY and ORGANIZED!)

Okay…we all know I’m not a great photographer so please excuse the pictures.  It was a gloomy day when I took them so I did my best.

It’s so nice to see the top of the washer and dryer again!

Typically, I’m a very organized person.  I have a thing for bins, baskets and organizers of all kinds.  So the insides of my cabinets weren’t in bad shape. 

I had just gotten lazy and hadn’t put things away for awhile.  And, some of my organization just wasn’t working and other things didn’t have a home so one needed to be created.  All of that equals clutter.

As an additional challenge, my husband loves to shop at Costco so we buy a lot of stuff in bulk.  When we get toilet paper, we get about 50 rolls at a time.  Same goes for paper towels, Kleenex, toilet bowl cleaner (usually a 6 or 8-pack of cleaner), sponges, you name it.  And, I have a painting habit which requires plenty of supplies (I don’t like to store them in the garage because of how hot it gets in the summer).  So, yeah, despite all of our cabinets, storage is an issue.

However, after throwing out a bunch of stuff we don’t need and doing a little re-arranging I was able to create some open space for a future Costco run.  I’m sure it will be filled up again soon.

I also used my label maker to label the shelves in the lower cabinet that the kids will be acessing. I’m frequently asking them to get an old towel to wipe something up and inevitably they come back with a brand new one that shouldn’t be used for the floor. I’m hoping this update will eliminate that problem.

So you’re probably wondering where all of my extra paper towel rolls are now that I talked about having to find storage for them. It’s kind of funny. We don’t keep the refrigerator running (only during the holidays when we’re doing a lot of extra cooking) so our extra paper towels are in the freezer! Ha ha! 

Even though I was able to fit most everything in the cabinets, I still wanted to get a couple of new storage baskets for prettier, visible storage.  I found some cute ones at Target.

One basket is for random dirty laundry (like dirty socks left by the back door, dish rags and dog towels) and the other is for miscellaneous stuff like the newspaper I’m saving for a craft project.  I also bought a smaller basket that’s on top of the refrigerator for my miscellaneous items I use for DIY projects — screws, wall anchors, wallpaper brush, etc.  I don’t want to keep this with my husband’s tools because I can keep better track of it if I have my own, easy-to-reach space.

So, that’s my big reveal. 

Not as eye-catching as some of my inspiration posts (An Organized Laundry Room and Laundry Room Inspiration) but I’m so happy to walk in there now. It just feels better and is easier to work in. What a difference de-cluttering and organizing makes!

If you’d like to see more laundry room organization (and other organized rooms, too) check out Home Organization 101 at A Bowl Full of Lemons.