By Benita Larsson

When it comes to utility rooms my definite color of choice is pure white. To me it just spells C-L-E-A-N. I never even considered another color for our basement. White was such an obvious choice. All downstairs utility areas including the laundry room are pure white. Even the garage in fact.

So if you ask what my personal criteria for a laundry room are, this is it:
White. Clean. Pretty. Organized. And not necessarily in that order.

So here it is. Nothing fancy, just a walk through passage in the basement of our house but it serves its purpose and it does in my mind check the boxes.

Before tackling any room in our house I always assess what the room is to be used for. In this case it seems obvious, laundry, but I know there are laundry rooms out there with far more uses than just getting clothes clean. And that’s great as long as there’s still room for washing dirty garments.

If you share your laundry space with other activities try separating the two (three?) by defining areas; this side is for doing laundry, that cabinet’s for storing craft supplies, that corner is for gym equipment etc.

Also, try to think outside of the box if you have problems getting everything in one space. In our case the layout of our 1930’s basement isn’t ideal so we’re drying our clothes in a different room and that’s shared with my sewing nook. It’s more important to get your area to work for you than what the original plans say the rooms should be used for.

So some details; For storage I have three laundry baskets, one for white, one for colored and one for black garments. They sit under a work top which we built ourselves and tiled and above a narrower, also tiled, shelf for supplies.

Here are a couple of the ways that I’ve stored laundry detergent in the past. Plastic candy containers (free from the local grocery store) with handwritten labels, and what I use now; two glass jars, one plain for regular detergent and one with a white dot sticker for detergent with bleach. I really believe that decanting the detergent from the busy looking boxes they come in helps prettify the space immensely and make for a cleaner look. And pretty and clean is important to me as you may have figured out by now.

The galvanized bucket is for carrying the wet clothes from the washer to the room where I line dry. Functional but also good looking.

For those little extras such as spot cleaners, dryer sheets (these are just air fresheners in our house as we line dry everything), pegs etc I keep an open basket on the shelf. This is also where I toss anything I find in pockets before washing. If anyone is missing something they can look in here. If you’re strapped for cash it’s a good place to go because there are always coins in there…

I love a little art thrown in any room for the pretty factor and the laundry room is no exception. I simply lean frames against the back wall and they are so easy to swap out when I want a change.

There you have it, our clean and organized laundry room!

Thank you Benita!

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