Laundry room isn’t the most delightful area to declutter. Being a place that is used for washing and cleaning all your dirty laundry, it doesn’t really invite you with a smiling face. And since you don’t sleep or relax or cook in your laundry room, it’s the last place that you want to declutter. You know that cleaning it would be an exhausting task, and it would not be worth your time because it’s one of the least important areas of the house.
But if you try looking at your laundry room with a different perspective, it’s actually the space where you wash your clothes, put them up for drying, iron and fold them. These tasks, though small, play a huge role in how the rest of your home looks.
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If you’ve been thinking that cleaning and decluttering your laundry room isn’t as important a task as I’m making it out to be, stop right there and ask yourself a question.
Will you be happy wearing clothes that were washed in a dirty laundry room?
Well, you certainly won’t eat at a restaurant that looks dirty and cluttered. So why settle for clothes that have been cleaned in a cluttered and unorganized laundry room?
There are many benefits of keeping your laundry room clutter-free but the most important one comes in the form of hygienically washed clothes. In addition, a decluttered laundry room would make you want to wash your clothes more often thereby keeping the laundry clutter in control.
So if you’re ready to kickstart your laundry room declutter journey, here are some powerful ideas that will help you accomplish the same in no time:
1. Empty Out Your Laundry Room
While it may sound like an unnecessary step, it would become easier to declutter your laundry room if you just begin by emptying it out. Apart from giving you a clean slate to work on, an empty laundry room will make the process of cleaning easier and will allow you to rearrange the stuff.
Take everything out of the cabinets and drawers and gather it all on in one place. The only items that should stay in your laundry room at this point is your washing machine. Now take a step back and visualize how you want your laundry room to look like. Taking a look at the space might give you an idea of how you would like the items to be rearranged.
2. Mop And Clean The Room
Now that your laundry room is empty, utilize this time to clean every possible corner. Take a rag and some cleaning spray to wipe clean the flat surfaces and the insides of the cupboards. Double cleanse the floor and remove the stains, if any.
Move around the washing machine to mop the area underneath. Vacuum the area behind the washing machine and scrub off the insides using white vinegar and water. Use disinfectant wipes to clean the surface of the washing machine and an antibacterial cleaning solution to sanitize your cloth hampers and laundry baskets.
3. Sort Through The Clutter Pile
It’s now time to start sifting through the items that you’ve emptied out of the laundry room. Get rid of items that you haven’t used in the last 6 months and the ones you don’t like. You’ll come across old gloves and socks that have lost their pair and are of no use. Look for any empty bottles, deformed containers or detergents that has solidified over time. You’ll find drying hangers that are misshapen or have turned rusty over time. Trash all these items right away.
4. Create Individual Work Zones
Your laundry room isn’t just a space for washing your clothes. It’s where you dry them after washing, before ironing and folding them. It’s important to make sure that you can easily perform all these functions in your laundry room without creating a ruckus. Divide your laundry room into work zones – one each for the washing machine, dryer (or the drying hangers), ironing table and a flat surface for folding the clothes.
I have the same work zone for ironing and folding the clothes because my laundry room is small and I don’t want to clutter it too much. You can go for a wall-mounted ironing table that is a great space-saving option for small homes.
5. Embrace Different Storage Solutions
You need to have a proper storage system for each of the zones to make it easier to organize the stuff in your laundry room. Get some wall shelves to utilize the vertical space, and organize items based on how often you use them. Items like detergents and laundry cleaning brush can be kept in a storage bin on the lower shelf or in a cabinet that is easily accessible.
To have more shelf space for organizing the folded clothes, use a hanging shelf and fabric storage bins. You can also get a sturdy tension rod to hang your clothes using hooks or hangers. I have a few pretty baskets for tossing in small laundry items like socks, handkerchiefs and underwear.
6. Arrange Everything Back
Now that you’ve sorted through the items, cleaned the laundry room and got the storage in place, it’s time to put everything back. Arrange the laundry cleaning supplies in the cabinets and the baskets on the flat surfaces. Make sure that you put like items together to make it easier for you to find things when you need them.
Get a small trash can for waste lint, empty bottles and other items of trash. You can also install a wall-mounting drying rack where you can spread your clothes for drying. In addition to the drying rack, I have a clothesline on the terrace for drying the excess clothes.
Washing your clothes is a chore that seems too uninteresting to begin with. Add to it a cluttered and dirty laundry room and you will find yourself procrastinating more. But decluttering the laundry room will make it an enticing space to be in and will make it a lot more usable in the long-term.