My Practical Laundry Room Makeover Reveal!

It's taken weeks of work, and my original plan has been adjusted some, but it's finally done! I can finally show you all my practical laundry room makeover reveal! If you haven't already, you might want to take a moment first to look at the laundry room's "before" in my Laundry Room Makeover Planning article.

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A lot is crammed into the small 6 foot by 8 foot space in this laundry room. I would love to install beautiful cabinets above the washer and maybe paint a decorative mural on the other wall. But reality dictates that I need to cram storage and function into every corner of this room. Style gives way to a practical laundry room makeover in my world!

Practical Laundry Room Makeover

My completed practical laundry room makeover utilizes one of my favorite storage and organizing tools - plastic latch boxes from Sterilite! They can hold anything, can be repurposed easily when my needs change, and they keep the dust out! Also, they stack to take advantage of vertical storage space more efficiently.

I worked hard during this makeover to follow the concept of keeping like things all together in one place. Over the years, this room grew more and more haphazard as I put things wherever I could cram them in. The resulting chaos has made it difficult to remember where things live. It feels like lately we spend huge amounts of time searching for things we can't find. Now, everything has a zone that it lives in so we know exactly where to look!

Practical Laundry Room Makeover

Let's start our tour of my practical laundry room makeover on the narrower side of the room. This side I turned into a combination pantry and cleaning storage area.I made only two major additions on this side of the room. I fixed the wasted space over the Green Machine with a short new run of shelving. And a new ironing board holder finally replaced the old one that didn't fit my iron anymore.

Ironing Board Holder

I love my new ironing board holder! This new one has a basket for the iron, so I shouldn't have the problem again of an iron not fitting into the holder. The basket's extra space will hold my pressing cloth and other accessories for my iron, which I had to keep in my craft studio until now. The distilled water for steam sits within reach of my iron now as well, on the end of the new top shelf extension.

Practical Laundry Room Pantry Shelves

The most dramatic change that I made in reorganizing the contents of this shelving involved transferring the contents of a messy stack of cardboard boxes to nicely matched and stacked Sterilite plastic latch boxes. It looks so much neater now! I can also see much easier how much I have of these frequently used items, and get into the boxes easier.

I moved a lot of the contents of this shelf area around. The cereal sits at a more reachable height now, and the detergent I don't need to reach often is up high. After I finished, I discovered I had empty area left over for future pantry usage. I haven't decided how to use it yet, but I'm sure it won't be empty for long!

Practical Laundry Room Makeover Tool Hanging

Underneath the shelves on this side, the area beside the door has become my cleaning tools closet. The vacuum cleaner lived in this spot already. Now I've added hooks that hold my other major cleaning tools so they all have a home together in one spot. At only $2 each from Lowe's, this fix was a bargain!

One other detail that I added to the shelving in this room is visible on the empty shelf above the hooks. I love wire shelving for its affordability and versatility, but the wire can be challenging to sit things on. Small items fall through the gaps, and wobble. The rubber coating causes friction sliding containers on and off. To solve this, I installed Closetmaid's vinyl shelf liner. This step is totally optional but for me enhanced the usability of the shelves.

Practical Laundry Room Makeover storage

On the other side of the room, I made more extensive changes in my practical laundry room makeover. I completely tore out the 12" shelving and replaced it with deeper 16" shelving. I installed the new top shelf lower down than the old one. The items I wanted to store on the lower shelf left wasted space above them under the top shelf. Bringing the top shelf down allows for more boxes stacked between it and the ceiling. Plus, it makes the top shelf more reachable. 

Practical Laundry Room Makeover storage

At first glance, these boxes look like a jumble. But they are clearly labeled. More importantly, they are zoned. This is my favorite trick for organizing storage like this. Putting like things together in the same area means I know where to start looking for the right box!

The boxes on the far right contain household items like electrical cords, light bulbs, and picture hooks. The rest of the shelving holds mostly various emergency supplies, again zoned to organize them. The top shelf contains things like rain gear and emergency lamps. The bottom shelf contains first aid supplies.

(For those who didn't know, we live in Florida and have taken major hurricane hits the past two years. The experience has been scary enough to have us ramping up our disaster preparations - but more about that later.)

Practical Laundry Room Makeover detail

Again, on this side of the room small details counted. I put a decorative fabric placemat under the bottles stored on top of dryer. This will soak up any drips so they don't cause rust through the machine's top. Behind the machine, on nails in the wall, I hung two snake tools for fixing sinks and other hard to reach areas.

Directly above the dryer, easy to reach, are a few important things. A fire extinguisher is within steps of the kitchen and the garage. A small toolbox of frequently used tools makes it easy to do household chores. And I keep flashlights ready with a supply of batteries in case of emergency.

Practical Laundry Room Makeover

I did make one concession to vanity in my practical laundry room makeover. The carpet runner needed to be replaced, and I found this beautiful one for $40 at Target. I can't believe how much different it makes the room look! It softens the room, and dampens the noise as well. The pattern in the carpet hides dirt and dust well, too.

Not all of my plans came together for this project like I wanted. The cat's litter box is still waiting for the construction of the screen to shield it. The planned purging of the cleaning supplies in the white cupboard didn't happen. That will have to be step two!

It didn't cost me that much to do this, since I was modifying an existing set-up. But you can build this entire system from bare walls for a little under $500. (That includes all the shelving, storage boxes, cabinet, rug, ironing board holder, and various other items.) I found the most economical way to buy the Sterilite Deep Clip Boxes and Sterilite Large Clip Boxes was to buy the multi packs via my Amazon Prime. This can be done a bit at a time as budget allows if needed.

My laundry room makeover isn't exactly magazine pretty, but I love the new functionality. This room's new organization enhances the quality of our day to day life. And that is worth more to my family than picture perfect decor!

Practical Laundry Room Makeover - Use some home organization to make a small laundry room work for you as a pantry, emergency supply storage, and more!