Designing an Intentional Laundry Room


Utilitarian and functional doesn’t have to mean boring and unattractive. Whether your laundry area is a spacious room all its own or a corner closet, an attractive, well-organized space will make laundry day seem like much less of a chore.

Organizing the Laundry Room

Shelves are the answer here. The good news is that you can buy shelving systems at most home improvement stores and install them yourself. Assess your space. Chances are the walls are not being used and they could and should be. You can’t usually move the washer and dryer units, but you can use all of the space around them.

Shelving can be installed on top of the appliances, and all along the walls. The shelves will hold just about everything you need to do the laundry. Here are a few tips:

  1. Place the items used most often within easy reach and put the lesser-used items on a top or bottom shelf.
  2. Put detergents, softeners and anything you need to resupply often in glass containers so you can see when you are running low.
  3. If there is no room for a folding table, attach a fold-down board to a shelf and pull it down when needed.
  4. Keep a small container on a shelf for coins and such that are found in pockets.
  5. Keep a larger container for the inevitable unmatched socks and random items that you aren’t sure where they belong or who they belong to.
  6. Keep another small container for a sewing kit, so sewing on buttons that fell off in the wash, hems that came undone and other small sewing jobs that are apt to turn up after a load of laundry can be accomplished without undue delay.
  7. Hang up the ironing board and put the iron on a shelf to save space and keep these items handy.
  8. Hang a rod for drip-dries, or if lacking space, an empty shelf can serve as drying rack.


Rolling bins are great for sorting laundry. These can be placed under a bottom shelf and rolled out when needed. Of course, you need one bin for whites, darks and delicates, but to make it even easier, if you have a jeans-wearing family or someone’s work includes heavy work clothes, make a bin for jeans and another one for extra-heavy items.

A stacking-bin shelf is perfect for placing clean, folded clothes. Label each bin with the name of a family member or places where the bin contents belong, such as linen closet, mud room or pool room. The older family members can take the contents out of their bin and put the clothes away themselves. You might even get them to go to their bin, fold their own clean clothes and put them away, thus making laundry day a family affair and easier on the person normally in charge of laundry.

The idea is to take advantage of every inch of space in the laundry room. Over-the-door shelves can hold a lot in a small space as can corner shelves if there is limited wall space.

In the end, there may not be much in the way of artistic interior design, but you will have created an attractive and most of all, highly functional space for those never-ending laundry chores.

With move-in-ready models and floor plans for all your family’s needs, including lively family-friendly communities, the attractive, livable, well-built homes developed by Landmark 24 Homes are sure to please. With all of the models available, you will easily find one that includes a laundry room you will love to work in.

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