Laundry Area Makeover Pt. 1: Brainstorming

No pics in this post… before pictures to come.  As part of my tackling my housekeeping trouble spots I want/need to makeover our laundry area.  Doing that will solve problems #2 (laundry) and #4 (shoes) and go a long way with helping #5 (basement).  Here’s my plan…

I want to implement an awesome idea I read about in The Duggars: 20 and Counting!.  Michelle Duggar keeps all of her family’s clothes in one room near the washer and dryer.  The clothes are hung and the socks and undergarments are sorted in bins by size.  With their system there is no hauling laundry baskets to bedrooms or fighting with dresser drawers.  Who needs 19 kids to crave simplicity like that – not me!!  I want to keep all of our clothes in the basement most of the time.  Once a week, probably on Saturday night, we would each bring up our clothes for the week along with enough socks, underwear, etc. to get us through.  As the clothes get worn we’ll drop them down the laundry shoot like normal.  Result: no laundry baskets upstairs ever again.  Oh, I just LOVE the sound of that!!

Plus… are you ready for this?  We.could.keep.all.our.extra.shoes.down.there.  Yes my friends, Mount Shoe in the bottom of Brian’s closet could dissolve in to a beautiful area of empty floor space.  We could bring our cowboy boots up for church and put them back down there for the rest of the week.  Our dress shoes could stay down there – neatly arranged.  Ahhhh.  🙂

Now as we age we’ll obviously want to avoid all that running down the stairs.  For now, though, I’m already down there at least once a day to clean the litter box, feed the cat, or do laundry.  Not to mention check my seedlings or chicks when they’re down there.  So, keeping our clothes down there shouldn’t cause many extra trips.

I’m keeping a mental list of necessities needed for this makeover, as follows:

• Shelving for shoes
• Hanging rods for clothes
• A place for empty hangers
• 4 bins for each of our socks and undergarments
• Shelving for laundry soap and supplies
• A place to sort clean laundry
• A place to stain treat and soak items
• Trash can
• Scissors for cutting rags before holey socks get put back in with good socks
• Safety pins and post-its for noting what needs mending
• Bin or basket to hold mending
• More foam floor tiles
• Ironing board and iron, and a place for it to be permanently set up

What else would be handy to add in?  How do you handle laundry?  What is your laundry area like?

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