How to Organize a Small Laundry Room: A Step-by-Step Guide

A laundry room is usually the smallest room in the house. When it comes to organize a small laundry room, it is always a challenging task to make the room functional and to fit everything inside. Moreover, designing a small laundry room can be tough and frustrating at times, but it doesn’t have to be. Here are our tips and tricks to organize a small laundry room.

How to prepare before organizing a small laundry room?

Preparing sounds unnecessary. You may think that you can use the time to find more ideas for your small laundry room. However, it is an essential part of the process – if you don’t want to mess up later. The tips below will help you to get started:

1. Evaluate Your Room and Needs

Before you start organizing, take a brief moment to evaluate your small laundry room. These are three questions to ask before you start organizing your laundry room:

• What items need storage? Think about laundry supplies, cleaning tools, pet accessories, and any miscellaneous items that tend to accumulate.
• How much space do you have? Measure your shelves and available wall space to understand your storage potential.
• What are your daily needs? Consider the flow of your laundry routine and what you use most frequently.

2. Planning Your Layout

• Draw a Simple Layout: Draw a basic sketch of your small laundry room and plan where you want to place shelves, hooks, and bins. You can draw it with pen and paper or digitally like in Canva.
• Prioritize Accessibility: Ensure that frequently used items are within easy reach, while less frequently used items can be stored higher up.

An important point in how to organize a small laundry room is to stay basic. When you let more “non-important” items into the room, it will end up making the room cramped, no matter how good you are at organizing.

How to organize a small laundry room’ shelves

A wall-hung open shelves are great for a small laundry room. You should try to get them whenever you can as the openness creates an illusion of spacious space. They are also perfect to store your laundry supplies and accessories. Here’s how you maximize your open shelves:

1. Layer your shelves with a protective sheet

When you pour your liquid detergents some residues are dropping. As a result, it will come in contact with the protective layer rather than your shelf.

2. Prioritize shelving frequently used items

Place your frequent-use items on reachable shelves that are not too high or low. It will make grabbing your items easier and reduce overextending your back to grab items in too high or low places.

3. Keep cleaning and chemical products safe

If your laundry area is in the same room as the kitchen or bathroom, you need to make sure to keep your cleaning and chemical products in a safe space such as on top shelves. Furthermore, you should put them in their original container or with a clear label that tells you what it is.

How to organize a small laundry room cabinets

Similar to shelves, cabinets are one of the best storage solutions for the laundry room. Shelves are usually open and wall mounted, while cabinets are closed storage with doors that are lower than waist height. You can put most items that you can’t put on shelves in your cabinets. Here are things that you should consider to optimize your small laundry room cabinets:

1. Organize based on item height

Consider the size of your items, especially the height. The inside height of your cabinets will affect the items that can be stored inside, especially tall cleaning products and paper towels.

2. Front row or back row

Position your products and items based on the frequency of use. Put items that you use often on the front and the ones that you use occasionally on the back.

3. Group your items with containers

You can group some of your items inside a small to medium container before putting them inside the cabinets. This will further organize your room’ cabinet, making the inside of your cabinet look tidy.

4. Label your shelves

Clearly label your shelves to ensure that your items and containers have their designated place.

5. Label your containers

When you have multiple containers, it is easy to become lost and forget what’s stored inside. That is why labeling the containers is essential in this situation—you can have simple labeling like “Soap”, “Detergent”, “Tools”, “Laundry Clips”, and more.

6. Declutter your cabinets

You can declutter your cabinets by separating fabrics and cleaning products. Make one cabinet exclusively for cleaning products and another cabinet solely for your clean towels, microfiber cloth, and other fabrics.

7. Put big and heavy items on the last row

You will need a place to store your big and heavy items – like vacuum cleaners, baskets, or large detergent bottles. The ideal place to store such items is on the last row of your cabinets. Making them accessible to use at any time while keeping them hidden and organized.

What laundry organizer items to get for a small laundry room

Repurposing items for your small laundry room will save you money – and you should. By using items that you already have, such as mason jars for clothespins or an old bookshelf for additional storage. But when you truly need new pieces, you can look for budget-friendly storage solutions at discount stores or online marketplaces when they are on sale.

1. Labeled laundry baskets

Have multiple labeled laundry baskets to organize your laundry based on the fabric types such as cotton, polyester, nylon, or spandex. Furthermore, you can sort your laundry based on colors and how to wash them like hand wash only, deep cleaning, soft colors, dark colors, and more.

2. Collapsible laundry hampers

They are great at hiding things like keeping your dirty laundry in a place before you are ready to wash them. And you can store your hampers under cabinets or countertops. But if there is no more room inside a concealed cabinet, then put it in the corner of the room.

3. Honeycomb mesh laundry bags

I have lost count of how many times these small bags with mesh have saved my precious clothes from tears and nicks.

4. Laundry clips

Always have them close to keep your laundry from blowing away when you air dry them. Get several of them in hand as they are infamous for disappearing when you need them.

5. Wire Shelves

They are cost-effective in storing your laundry products. You can make use of wall-hung wire shelves to put your favorite cleaning supplies. Also, they keep cleaning products away from your curious kids and pets.

6. Rolling cart organizer

They are lightweight and you can easily move them between rooms. They are great at storing small and tall items, like tall bottles of detergent.

7. Hooks and Pegboards

Utilize your laundry wall to hook up cleaning tools such as broom and mop.

How to maintain a small laundry room?

Maintaining a small laundry room is as simple as setting up a routine check-up. You should keep a schedule of weekly or monthly checks to declutter and reorganize shelves. How thorough your routine maintenance is will depend on the frequency of your routine check-up. Furthermore, a deep clean once in half a year or a year will be beneficial to freshen up your laundry room.

1. Weekly Maintenance: Simple Wipe and Tidy Up

• Simple cleaning: A simple floor cleaning with a broom, vacuum, or mop. And gentle wipe on the surface of your appliances and shelves when you find dirty spots.
• Sort Items: Put items back in their original containers – like laundry supplies, cleaning products, and laundry accessories.

2. Monthly Maintenance: Reorganize Your Shelves

• Wipe down shelves: Use a mild cleaner to wipe down all surfaces.
• Restock your cleaning products: Check the current amount of your cleaning products. Purchase a new one when necessary.
• Plus, everything is in weekly maintenance.

3. Half-Year or Yearly Maintenance: Deep Clean

• Empty everything out: Take everything off your shelves to start with a clean slate.
• Wipe down all surfaces: Use a mild cleaner to wipe down all surfaces. Clean the floor, appliances, cabinets, and shelves thoroughly.
• Throw away unused items: Discard expired products, broken tools, and anything you haven’t used in the past six months.
• Plus, everything is in monthly maintenance.

A quick small laundry room checklist

Here is a quick checklist of small laundry room. Besides items to organize a small laundry room, there are other items included to help you get what you need for your small laundry room. And it will be updated frequently to keep up with new products and tools.

How to make a hidden laundry area?

To make a hidden laundry area, you can get a laundry closet. A laundry closet is an enclosed space, like a cabinet, to store and separate washing and drying machines from the rest of the room. They are becoming popular as they are excellent for smaller houses or apartments. Moreover, the laundry closet can be designed to match the theme of the room décor, like matching kitchen cabinets, without compromising any laundry function.

Which washing machine is best for a small laundry room, front-load or top-load washing machine?

In most cases, a front-load washing machine is superior to a top-load washing machine. A front-load washing machine uses less electricity and consumes less water while giving the same if not better result than a top-load washing machine. When talking in numbers, an Energy Star certified front load washing machine uses 45% less energy and 50% less water. Another thing that I love about a front-load washing machine is it can be stacked. You can stack front-load washing machines on top of each other, while you can’t do the same with top-load washing machines. This is crucial if you have a small laundry room.

Conclusion

Organizing a small laundry room is achievable by keeping only the essentials and using multipurpose items. There is always enough space in your small laundry room to store and keep all your laundry needs when you organize them correctly. Remember, the key to organize a small laundry room is to combine practicality with a touch of creativity to make the space work for your family. There is still more stuff to learn on designing a functional small laundry room, like how to maximize the functionality of small laundry room. You can read it if you are interested to learn more. Happy organizing!