Before and After: How Smart Storage Transformed our Laundry Room

I’ve always thought of my laundry room as the most troublesome room in our house. Not only is it narrow, but all of one side is taken up by a washing machine, sink and toilet. Add to that the fact that there are 2 doors that open inward, and the space starts to feel very small indeed.

I’d long ago resigned myself to having a difficult laundry room I didn’t enjoy being in. Turns out I couldn’t have been more wrong!

With a few creative storage solutions, we’ve transformed our cluttered room into one where there’s plenty of space for all the items we need to house. And we didn’t have to do any renovations – just some simple laundry room storage changes.                

 

Want to know how I solved some of our biggest laundry room storage woes? Follow along below!

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Problem

Problem one was the awkward set-up of our laundry. In our narrow space where three walls were already taken up by doors, a washing machine, toilet and sink, having a large freestanding shelving unit was out of the question. Anything that protruded too far from the remaining wall would make it hard to walk through the laundry, and could obstruct one (or both) of the doors from opening.

Here are some of the laundry room storage solutions we put in place to maximize the free space:

Over the toilet storage: Crazy that we didn’t do this before now. Just adding those extra few shelves has made a HUGE difference to the total amount of space we have in our laundry.

Over/behind the door storage: Because when there are so many doors, you may as well make use of them! I added a nice set of hanging pockets over the back of the interior door for small items, and a few hooks inside the cupboard door for our not-so-pretty brushes and dusters.

Slim shelves: Initially, I didn’t want to take up floor space with a shelving unit, but I was won over by some of the options available for small spaces at Ikea. This one, from the Dynan range, is a modest 27cm deep, which was happily the exact depth of our new laundry hamper. The two fit together perfectly while still leaving space for both of the laundry doors to open inward. 

Letting everything hang: Seems obvious in hindsight, but getting things up and off our floor/washing machine/windowsill freed up lots of valuable space.  I added a set of baskets above the sink to store often used items like rubber gloves and cloths, and hung a memo holder with hooks and clips to hold our dustpan, scrubbing brush and little odds and ends. Suction cup baskets keep our soap, sponges and plugs out of the way above the sink.  

Problem

Laundry room storage issue number two? Our old clunky laundry items. For example, guess who didn’t think about their small space before they bought a giant round hamper that obstructs half the room? Yes, us!

Here’s what we changed up to save space:

• Obviously the first thing to go was that hamper. After a bit of searching, I found a slim, rectangular hamper that fits snugly against the wall AND folds down flat when not in use. Much better.
• We got rid of the three laundry baskets (really, why did we need 3?!) that took up all the room on top of our washing machine, and replaced them with one collapsible bamboo laundry basket. It fits so snugly behind our laundry hamper that you can’t even see it in the photos.
• Instead of 3 folding laundry racks taking up precious space, we got one larger one for indoors that we now store in the garage (and we use our free-standing outdoor one when the weather’s fine).

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What do you think? Got any other smart ways to amp up the laundry room storage in a tiny room? Share it with us in the comments below!