Today I’m sharing with you some Laundry Room Shelving & Storage ideas that have worked well for me in my home. If you like this idea, you may also like this project on how to build your own mudroom lockers.
Today I’m going to take break from sewing and crafting, to share with you some Laundry Room Ideas! A few years ago I posted about how we made our own Mudroom Lockers from IKEA bookcases for our combo laundry room and mudroom.
Table of Contents
At the time I posted the other half of the room, the laundry side was still a disaster! Since then I’ve received quite a few emails asking what we ever did to organize the laundry side of the room. Today I can finally show you what we did!
How We Organized our Laundry Room
room has zero natural light— these are the best photos I can get, you’ll forgive me right?
I’m not a naturally organized person, as I’m sure you can tell from the photo below. With this in mind, I can tell you that we’ve found a Laundry Organization system that works for us, and if it works for us well then it will probably work for anyone.
Before I explain what we did, here’s a quick review of the disaster that was our Mudroom & Laundry room.
The Before
Yep not pretty. Inadequate shelving, a bad color and that’s the door to the garage. The other side of the room (if you can call it that) leads to the kitchen. Bad design. We fixed the first side with Mudroom Lockers that we built ourselves.
Many years later they still work great and I have no plans to change them.
The Laundry side of the room just got finished this summer. The hold up was the washer and dryer. To implement my “grand plan” I needed a stackable washer and dryer. It took 3 years to convince the hubby of my evil plan. Finally this January we took the plunge.
Step One: Paint
After the washer and dryer the next step was painting the cabinets and the room. I chose blue for the cabinets and white for the walls to give it a clean look.
Step Two: Built In Cabinets
Next up was cabinetry. As much as I wanted to use IKEA shelving for this project I could not find any that would fit our strangely shaped room.
Instead we had a local closet company come out and build in shelves. It was great because I got exactly what I wanted in the exact size I wanted! I just picked the “budget” grade shelving and it did not turn out to be as expensive as I thought it would be.
Everything’s done now and here’s how the system works.
How our Laundry System Works
Everyone has a basket. They are now labeled (after a few, “that’s not my basket!! ” incidents). I just attached laminated cards to each basket with some twine. I wash and dry the clothes then fold them right out of the dryer! That’s the trick for us, no throwing clean laundry in a basket and hoping it will get folded eventually.
The kids then take their baskets, empty them and bring them back downstairs. Sometimes they skip a step and leave the basket in their room, but they are still learning.
There’s also a basket for Linens, Bathroom items and Kitchen items. As you can see the kids need to take their linen basket upstairs to empty it.
Here’s a shot looking into the room, the laundry is on the left and you can see our IKEA mudroom lockers on the right.
I love the blue cabinets! This room gets zero natural light and the lighter cabinets and white paint really help to brighten up the room.
The top shelves are for laundry detergents, reusable shopping bags and lunch boxes. We’ve got plenty of shelving and haven’t even filled it all up yet.
When you see the before and after you can see how much better the room functions now. I am SOO glad it’s done. That room is the main path into our house and it would stress me out every day to see it such a wreck! It’s not perfect, sometimes I still get behind on laundry, but so far it’s working much better than before. Which means, less time doing laundry and more time for other things.
If you’re looking for other DIY Laundry room Ideas, my friend Mique has several on her blog.
Gretchen says
Turned out great! I have blue cabinets in my laundry room too. I think it makes it seem more serene 😉
Candace says
I love the way this looks!! I love your idea with the baskets. We have second floor laundry which is nice, but interrupts nap time for the little guy. We are a family of 5 so I had to come up with a laundry schedule. I do 1-2 loads a day and usually have a free day on the weekend with no laundry. We used to use our timer setting to have the wash finish when we woke up so we only had to wait for the laundry to dry and it wouldn’t stay in the washer all day. I loved that.
Janet says
Where are the dirty clothes and how are they sorted?
Cindy says
Awesome! I’ll have to share with my DIL as she needs help in her laundry room.
kathy says
I love your organizational skills. It looks great! So neat, the baskets were a great idea.
Donna B says
Love the laundry room……wish I had that much space!!!!!
Linda says
Looks fantastic! You did a great job with the layout, and, the color really makes a big difference!
Alana says
I love the hanging space above the sink, great idea!
jamie says
This is awesome. Loved the post. Gathering ideas to make ours more efficient too.
Me me says
Thank you!!!!!!! This is my laundry room space and we are going to do this too!!!!!!!!! Exactly like yours. We currently don’t have a utility sink so that will get added too. For everything we are being charged $1000, is that too much? That includes, lockers, sink, stacking (they aren’t the same), moving electric lines, shelves etc. you saved my sanity!!!!!!
Mom to Five says
Love the basket idea now that mine are old enough to put their own stuff away. How does it work with the machines stacked? I’m looking to do this in a laundry room in a house we are rehabbing. Our current machine shakes so bad I’d be afraid of it knocking off the dryer!
BTW…what kind of machines are they?
Shannon says
How do you know if your front loaders are stackable? I would love to do this, but I don’t know if I can stack mine. Thanks!
You have to ask when you buy them. The first set we knew were not stackable but would not work to stack at our old house. For this set we went in and told the sales lady that we only wanted a stackable set. Some can be stacked you just need to buy a “stack kit” , check the website of your washer/dryer if you’re not sure.
DIM - Did it myself says
I just discover the mudroom lockers and I just love the idea.
We have a laundry room in my garage (were it is not possible to put a car in it) but it’s not so high room as we added an attick in the roof.
I spend lots of time taking care of the laundry and haven’t found any good design for ours. It’s a pitty that shops don’t sell usefull cupboards for that space of the house. My husband is just thinking it’s useless to have a 3 stars laundry.
On my plans I have putted a big workplan (as the machine are not stackable) to fold the laundry and hang the shirts. Were do you fold the laundry ?
Elaine says
I am so glad I found your blog. I am moving into a new smaller home soon, and have envisioned the laundry area with stackable washer and dryer, and floor to ceiling shelving next to it. Only my shelving will be about one laundry basket wide! Great to see what it looks like for real and not in my imagination. Does the dryer get enough ventilation next to the shelving unit? Nice work in the mud room!!
Yes, the dryer is ventilated to the outside (the builder did that when the home was built) so it’s not an issue to have it in the cabinetry.
April says
What are the measurements on your shelves with the laundry baskets?
I’m not 100% sure, we made them the same depth as the cabinet so it would look more built in. From what I’ve seen laundry basket sizes change a lot so I’d get the baskets first if you want your shelves the same size.
Kaley says
how deep are your shelves? where did u get the mini laundry baskets to fit depth
I bought the baskets first then had the shelving built to the size of the baskets
Joy Martinez says
Hey Melissa! These look great! So, did you just bring your measurements to IKEA then? Or did you start with a certain IKEA product?
For the Laundry room shelving around the washer and dryer we had it custom built by a local company. The mudroom locker side of the room is made from IKEA bookshelves
Mary says
We do the basket thing at our house, too. I LOVE how it works. Even if the clothes don’t get taken to the individual bedrooms, we know to check our baskets in the laundry room for needed items. This tip keeps our bedrooms and laundry room much neater.
Amanda says
This looks to be exactly my current laundry room set up with exactly what I want to do. Could you please tell me how wide your room is? I think yours might be a little wider than mine, so I am worried about the lockers sticking out too far. Thank you and beautiful job!
Melani says
Do you mind sharing how you manage dirty laundry?
K says
Where are the dirty clothes and how are they sorted?
We keep dirty clothes in our bedrooms and only bring them down to wash.