Laundry Room Makeover

Mike and I are fairly organized people. We share the cleaning duties around our house, and I am so thankful that he likes to keep things tidy as much as I do.  :)

But like most people with busy schedules, sometimes things just get crazy and disorganized. Such was the case for our laundry/utility room. We have our washer/dryer out here, but it is also a storage closet of sorts. It had evolved into the catch all for the things we couldn't keep outside in the shed, but didn't really know what else to do with. And since we keep this door closed, we had just started stacking things...

We had already started the organization process at this point, but I wanted to get some "before" photos)

The stacking and clutter had started to grate on my OCD organization brain, so I told Mike we needed to make a change and get this room organized. We had some gift cards from IKEA that we hadn't used yet from our wedding, so I made the suggestion that we use those to get organized. So like the loving and sweet husband that he is, he took me to IKEA one afternoon after church and let me have at it. I'm pretty sure he tweeted something about my love language being home organization equipment. That may or may not be true.  :)

So while it's still a dual-purpose room and not the fanciest of makeovers (we are still renting after all), things are organized and functional. It's just nice when everything has its proper place. So here are the "after" photos:

We added some additional shelving and drawers, and we "hid" our folding chairs behind the washer/dryer in such a way that they won't be tumbling out into the middle of the floor anymore (like they so often did before). This room has zero insulation, so it gets COLD out there in the winter! So the floor is ice cold when we go out to do laundry or get food for Sasha. So the rug is a nice addition to help our poor feet, at least a little :)

We keep our stash of drinks and paper products for our home group out here, as well as all of our tools and cleaners. So it was nice to organize that stuff too.

We hung our ironing board so it was out of the way, and we added a drying bar for laundry.

We also added a little decor to make it feel a little homier. I got the "Laundry" sign at Hobby Lobby for $10 (50% off sale!). And I made the colored "Sort, Wash, Fold, Iron" signs on my computer and put them each in a $2- 5x7 IKEA frame. Simple. Mike said I made them so he wouldn't get confused haha :)

So there you go. Thank you to the sweet family and friends that gave us IKEA gift cards for our wedding!