Built-In Laundry Sorting/Folding Station

Just before Christmas, I schemed up a plan to put in the ultimate gift wrap station in our new under-the-stairs storage closet.  I get these ideas where I start looking around our home at every piece of furniture with a mischievous eye.  After some measuring, I realized that our previous kid's craft cabinet turned laundry room linen storage cabinet was the perfect size.  All of my baskets, supplies, and gift wrapping items would fit inside the cabinet, and the cabinet itself fit in the nook under the stairs as if it were built for it specifically.  The stars aligned and off it went.  And that left my laundry room wall looking like this.

The cabinet previous held our beach gear and some linens for when we entertain guests.  It also had a clothing rod for hanging clothing items out of the dryer.  After a few weeks of living with piles on the floor where the old cabinet once lived... we decided that this blank slate was the perfect opportunity to put in some storage we have been dreaming up for a very long time.

We have always wanted to add pedestals under our washer and dryer, so we have been looking at alternative solutions for a folding station/table.  This blank wall presented itself as the ideal place to add in an area for folding linens, hanging clothing and sorting down a few of the specialty items we wash (delicates, linens and whites). 

The tall cabinet shown above was another wish list item.  Our home wasn't designed with storage in mind when it was built 12 years ago, and that has forced us to get creative in more ways than one.  And you guys know me, I love to keep "like" items together whenever possible.  But that just has not been happening in terms of our cleaning supplies.  A cleaning caddy under the kitchen sink, brooms hung in the garage, a vacuum cleaner down the hall in a linen/first aid closet and our mop bucket/mop in our main bathroom shower.  Yes, I just outed a secret that we stored our mop in our shower.  No judging, please.  In the winter it cannot be hung out in the garage to dry, because it would just freeze.  So, it lived in our shower in-between uses.  By installing a tall cabinet, I could finally store the majority of our cleaning supplies in one central location (still leaving a few basic cleaners in commonly used areas such as under the bathroom and kitchen sinks).  It would also give me a place to store those items I use to create our DIY cleaning solutions.

We shared the step-by-step process on how to build the entire unit, over at the Home Depot blog here.  It started out with a brainstorming session between Bryan and me, creating our dream list and sketching up potential options.  Of course, it started out basic and simple sorting station that eventually grew to an entire wall to wall built-in unit.  Don't you love how that happens?

The entire process took about a week start to finish.  In typical fashion, we worked on evenings and the weekend tag-teaming the process of building, priming, and painting.   The process itself was pretty straight forward and having a plan going into it made it so much easier once we got started.  Here is the finished product.

All of the linens and beach supplies went back into the cabinets in the upper portion of the built-ins.

While the tall cabinet ended up being everything I was hoping for in terms of a cleaning closet!

I still have some tweaks to make to the cleaning closet itself.   I would like to line the floor and add some additional storage to the door for the rest of the supplies still sitting in a pile on the opposite side of the room.  More on that soon, but until then, the space for the tall supplies and the added clips for mops and brooms has been so fabulous. 

We reinstalled our clothing rod and I gave half of my hangers a coat of Lagoon spray paint.  I am a fan of loving the places I do chores, so bringing in bursts of color was a must.

I shared my tutorial for the easiest pegboard project ever right here.  Now you can see how it fit into my overall plans for the space.

The open shelving to the right holds my smaller fabric pieces and swatches, along with my sewing machine.

Recognize those baskets?  Yep, they are the same ones I dressed up with a bit of stain.  I found them just for this build and we sized everything accordingly.  They are perfect for sorting and toting around the house, I just need to add some labels to the front and maybe play with those liners a bit.

We have been using the area for a couple of weeks now and the folding counter has been one of those eye-opening additions that I wish I would have added years ago.  In fact, the entire project has really made the entire room so much more functional and gave us storage for items that have been a thorn in our side for quite a while.  And of course, the kids are not complaining about the missing mop and bucket from their shower.

Again, you can snag the supply list, build process and every last detail over at the Home Depot blog here.

Anyone else been adding life-altering storage to your laundry space?  How do you give a little love to the areas you work the hardest within?