There’s nothing better than a fresh, clean beginning to the new year. A refreshed and neat laundry room (or laundry closet or laundry nook) is a great place to start.
Survey Your Space
Assess your space and think about your habits. What is working in the laundry area and what isn’t? What makes you avoid doing laundry or what would make you more efficient at tackling the teetering pile of clothes? Thinking about how you use or could use the space helps you make a plan for how to approach your refresh.
Divide and Conquer
Remove all the items in the area. If that feels too overwhelming at the start, remove one section or category at a time. As you do this, make sure to divide up everything into one of three categories: keep, donate, ditch (trash/recycle). After that initial step is complete, it’s time to sort the items, keeping like with like. The sort categories are up to you and how you envision your space and process, but some of the categories that are pretty standard in the laundry area are: washing (detergents, stain sticks), drying (dryer balls, dryer sheets, drying rack), fabric care (iron, steamer), repairs (patches, sewing kit), cleaning (vacuum, mop, supplies), paper products (toilet paper, tissues, paper towels), and utility (toolbox, batteries, light bulbs).
Define and Design
Not everyone has the luxury of an entire room dedicated to laundry. And even if you do, chances are, the room supports lots of things other than laundry. So, going back to the first few questions, what job(s) do you want your laundry area to do?
If it is truly dedicated to laundry-only, make sure all keep items you do not use while doing laundry find a spot elsewhere. If it is a multi-functional space, arrange items for each activity in a logical way – keep all the cleaning supplies together, all the laundry items together, all the paper products together etc.
Once you have your categories set, think about their location. Is there anything you can adjust in the floor plan to help make things easier? You won’t move the actual washer and dryer, but maybe a shelf can be raised higher or a bookcase can be moved to a different wall.
What do you use on the daily? What is a very rare grab? You’ll want to put everything back in a prioritized order, making the most-used items the easiest to reach. Put those LED light bulbs for a top shelf (they last so long!) and keep the laundry detergent between waist and eye level for easy access.
Time to Organize
Now that you know how to get started, schedule a dedicate time to jump in. The best way to do that is to treat it like an oil change – put it on the calendar and protect the time you want to dedicate to it. If you can’t do it all in one fell swoop, tackle it by category in smaller chunks.
By being getting your laundry room in order, it’ll make the chore of doing laundry less of, well, a chore.
Let’s work together to all get more done in 2023. Contact us if you’d like a partner as you get going.