Laundry Room Redo

This year it was time to make a change and take control of my laundry room.

Instead of organizing our laundry, our laundry room stored a lot of food storage.  No room for baskets of clothes.  For our family of 8, this was a problem.  Sorting laundry onto the floor in piles has not worked very well.

I figured out where to relocate food storage items and rearranged shelves a bit.

My awesome husband built this laundry basket dresser from ana-white.com.  It is so awesome.

After painting and sealing the "dresser", I added paint chip labels to my laundry basket "drawers" to help create a uniform sorting system-whites, darks, lights, reds (reds, pinks, purples), towels.  We have an extra basket for the times when we have lots of one color or sheets to wash.

 You get the idea.  This way it makes it easier for the kids to sort dirty laundry too.

 In case you were wondering, the "drawers" really slide out.  Very easily in fact.  Love it!

The other awesome part of my laundry room is something my mom did when we were kids, based on the laundry system by Daryl Hoole.  Each person has a basket where their clean clothes are put.  I can tell the kids to empty their baskets after school and put their clothes away.  Sometimes I'll stick a small treat in their basket (like a Hershey Kiss) and they get a little reward for putting their clothes away.  :)  No more piles of clean laundry folded on the couch, or in the bedroom.  Yea!!!!  Talk about liberating.  This makes each family member more involved with the laundry.  I don't have to put the clothes away or risk my piles being tipped over by random couch or bed jumpers that pass through without warning. 

 

My two year old loves to put his basket of clothes away when older siblings are putting their clothes away.  As kids we had stackable baskets/bins where Mom folded and put our clean laundry.  So awesome, especially for a family with lots of kids.  I decided to use plastic dishpans from Walmart for our baskets.  They cost ~$2.00 each.  Cheaper than the stackable baskets and the kids can carry their clean laundry to their room in their basket, put their stuff away and bring the baskets back to their spot.  I used stacking wire shelves that we were not using to place each basket on (on top of the "dresser"). 

 I could have been fancier with putting names on the baskets, but functionality over cuteness won out (and it was easier).  I just wrote everyone's name with a permanent marker. 

I love my new system.  I've been wanting to implement it for years and finally figured out how to put it in place.  Yes!  Another mission accomplished. 

~Lena