Monday, February 11, 2008

Moving The Mountain of Laundry



Disclaimer: I do not always do the things I want to do but instead do the things I don't want to do. Got it?

See in the photo how we have the washer and dryer elevated on a shelf with room for baskets? Love it! My husband made the shelf in our old house because we had a tiny laundry. When we had a rental house it flooded and the washer and dryer were safe since they weren't on the ground.The kids have so much laundry that I needed somewhere to put it where it was not piled in front of the washer and dryer. I don't know about you but when I go to do the laundry and I can't make it to the machines I get discouraged and instead go find chocolate. On good days, I seperate clothes and start filling the washer with one color and put the other load in the basket under the washer. On normal days they are all piled together in front of the machine and I eat chocolate. I keep the basket under the dryer to put clothes when they come out of the dryer to fold. I also throw the lonely, regected, left behind socks waiting to be reunited one day. Okay, the shelf needs to be replaced and the molding was knocked off the front edge when we moved a couple of months ago but I hope you can get the idea.

My goal to keep the laundry going works great when i am consistent. I usually have two loads a day- one lights and one darks. I am trying to hang dry most of the clothes, but heard that it costs about $.40 to dry a load so I figure if life is hectic that sometimes it is worth paying to dry them. I have the one drying rack you see in photo next to the machines over the air vent. On the opposite wall from the machines I have a full wall of shelving where I hang everything possible on hangers to dry. You can hang towels and sheets with clothespins on the hangers. I have room below the hanging shelf where I can set up two more drying racks.I hang stuff that will need to be ironed to the left and stuff that just needs to dry and be put away to the right. Then, just put up the stuff on the right when dry. I am trying to iron all items on Monday and again on Thursday to keep clothes ironed.

Above the washer and dryer and hanging shelf I have two shelves that I store boxes with theme party supplies, paper towels, cleaners, emergency supplies, large canning stuff and dehydrator. Since we are new here I am not finished in here.

I found the battery organizer at a garage sale for $1.00 and spent about $80.00 at Christmas on rechargeable batteries. It has a tester on the top so we can tell when the batteries need recharging. I am hanging this somewhere in the laundry. I bought a wall organizer to hang my ironing board and two cans of starch, but still need to hang it.

I love Rhoda's laundry room and want to work on mine later to make it pretty like her's. If you go to Southern Hospitality there are photos of her laundry room. Just click on the title of this post to go to her blog.

3 comments:

Heart of Wisdom said...

Great post! I'm saving laundry links for a future speed post on my homemaking blog. I will be adding yours.

I like the way you use the storage under the machines.

See my Laundry Room makeover at http://heartofwisdom.com/heartathome

Mom2fur said...

Hi! Storage under the machine...brilliant idea!
Okay, the link thing: go back to your blogger dashboard and reopen this post (click on 'edit'). When the box comes up, you'll see some little pictures across the top. There's a T with some colored boxes, where you choose the color of your text. Right next to it is a green earth with two links over it. Click on the earth and you'll get a box asking what URL you want to make a link for. I usually delete the "http" they have there since when I copy and paste a link it already has an "http". Copy and paste your link into that box. Save the changes and you will see the link show up on your post!
I hope this helps you!

Laura said...

Very clever!!