Laundry Room conversion

I don't really have any "before" pictures for most of my projects. If I do, I'll post them. For this room, I don't.

Our laundry room is very large - approximately 10 foot by 7 foot, the size of a small bedroom. It holds my washer&dryer (HE's on pedestals), a large freezer, my Dyson, steam mop, and a lot of other things as you'll soon see. Too large to fit into one picture, I'll go through an area at a time.

This is the TV stand version of the EXPEDIT line at IKEA. I wanted the 5x5 EXPEDIT unit but it was constantly sold out in white and I became impatient. I'm glad we went with this one now because it's incredibly more versatile. The blue LEKMAN bins are expensive at $10 a pop (the ones seen inside the Expedit cubes) and are a bit fragile. They are working even holding heavy and bulky items, but the construction of them is not top notch. We have to be careful handling them. The bins hold, variously: candles, oils, and Scentsy bars; Lysol wipes; mismatched socks; the kids' karate gis and sparring gear; my upstairs Cleaning Bucket; Air Fresheners; miscellaneous cleaning products; dusting supplies; a Shark handheld vacuum for the stairs (yes that actually fits in one of these cubes...they are 14x14"!); my Shark steam accessories; Dyson accessories; and bathroom cleaning supplies (scrubbers, mildew spray, etc). 

The TROFAST lighter blue containers at the top have various functions. The two left-most ones hold "small rewards" and "large rewards" for the kids. The middle one holds clothes that are outgrown that I pull out of the clean laundry as I come across them (when it gets full, they are moved to a larger storage bin until I can sell or donate them). The last ones hold fabric I've been saving for years with the intention of having historical costumes made - silk velvet, dupioni silk, and other things that I just can't bring myself to let go of yet. Maybe someday! For now, they meet the rules of being Contained and Organized.

The lower shelf with the 2 lighter blue cubes now holds 2 larger blue plastic baskets. During the summer we used these to hold towels in one and swimsuits in the other. During the winter, I'll put those away (where? no clue yet) and one will hold mittens and hats, and the other will still hold towels for when snow or water gets tracked in on the tile floors.

The interior center of the EXPEDIT is neat. There's juuuuust enough room to fold smaller items on it. The vinyl applique I got on Etsy done in my laundry room colors just for a perky uplift to a room that's based around, face it, work and crummy chores. At the top I hung a bar (sorry, don't remember the name) from IKEA that was $2.99, and the little dark and light blue containers were 99c each. I use them for "stuff I find in pockets", lint from the dryer screen, trash, money, clean up towels (have to wipe down the gasket for the washer every once in awhile and clean out the drum). 

Here's the view over the washer&dryer with the ANTONIUS shelving line from IKEA. They hold a LOT of weight and are 24" deep! How awesome is that? The hanging rods are part of the line; here you can see I use them to hold the extra hangers so I can hang up laundry right as it comes out of the dryer. The top shelf is devoted to toilet paper (barely started the stockup in this pick) - it fits about 10 of the huge packs of Charmin across and one of Bounty (we rarely use paper towels, but they are nice to have around sometimes for like, killing bugs *ew*). The blue bags that say "Laundry" came from Lakeside Collection for $5; these hold our spare sheets. The smaller blue boxes (since replaced with slightly larger ones) hold tissues and feminine products. My actual laundry products are in the pedestals under the W&D.

The right side of the same thing (you can barely see the edge of the dryer to the left - to the right is the freezer edge) is where I hang clothing up as soon as it's out of the dryer - no more wrinkles! Also the perfect place to hang-dry items as well as they get some mild heat from the dryer in the room to release the wrinkles as they hang dry. More sheets are in the "Laundry" bin above (we have 6 beds, one of which is a king, and sheets for a queen size aerobed as well).

Below the hanging items are my laundry bins. I've since labeled the edge of each with a Sharpie to read "DARKS" and "LIGHTS". These neat bins from The Container Store are on rollers, so I roll them round to the washer when it's time to load - no lifting required! I am currently searching for an alternative though that will hold 3 across; I actually wash "darks", "lights", and "COLORS" so I'm still having to do after-sorting that I'd rather not. These work great for now though.

And finally, my $5 huge IKEA clear box on rollers. Yes, that thing is so large it covers the entire top of the freezer. That bin holds all of our extra and winter blankets and STILL HAS ROOM IN IT! I hope to move some others from the kids upstairs' linen closet to this soon, but I keep forgetting and those actually get used often.

So, that's my pretty awesome laundry room now! It's functional, it does everything it needs, and I love that it's fairly "decorated"!