Let’s talk laundry and laundry rooms. OMG SO MUCH LAUNDRY. Kids literally produce triple their weight in laundry. When we bought our dream home this summer I was ecstatic to see that the laundry room was so large and had ample space for sorting, organizing and folding laundry in the way I had always planned on doing, but never could make it happen.

I had all these lofty goals for a well-organized laundry room, but the thought of organizing and making over my laundry room seemed like a huge undertaking. Let’s face it there were always more pressing things on my to do list. Quickly the laundry room turned into the #1 dumping ground for any miscellaneous items I didn’t know where to put, stuff I was trying to get out of the kitchen, and overflowing baskets of clothes, and the super deep organizing drawers quickly filled up with paper stacks and unorganized odds and ends.

Here is my laundry room before 😱

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Enter the professional organizer

I decided I really needed help to get it done when it had gotten so bad that no one had clean underwear for weeks and I couldn’t find some important documents I thought I had thrown into that drawer.

I used a local Atlanta based home organizer Kenika Williams aka @tidiedbyk to come over and intervene! She was amazing. She did everything from shopping for the right pieces, she cleaned out and sorted every nook and cranny and paper stack, and hauled away all the donations, trash and even provided a shredding service. She created the space for me to function in there, and finally complete the decorative vision I had for the space since the beginning but could never complete because of how cluttered my laundry room became.

So without further ado – here is the my newly organized and perfectly designed laundry room!

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I asked Kenika what her top tips were for creating and maintaining an organized home and here is what she said!

Tip 1: Must haves for long-lasting organization: visibility, accessibility, and flexibility.

Visibility- Try to use transparent bins/containers or containers that can be labeled easily.
Accessibility- The things you use most, can you reach them? Building independence for your kiddos- is it labeled and in a place, they can access easily? Out of season items… store them on higher shelving or in the back of storage spaces. These are the types of questions you ask yourself when factoring in if it’s accessible.
Flexibility- Invest in and establish organizational systems and solutions that adapt to your changing needs. Invest in multi-functional furniture to store items.  

You can see in the photos about of the drawer organization we used in our laundry room design to help organize and make our space more visible, flexible and accessible.

Tip 2: Everything can’t stay. 

So you’ve made up your mind to finally get organized, well here’s the hardest part for most… pulling out EVERYTHING from the space you are organizing (start small) and making a decision about what to do with it! 
Take everything out and decide what stays and goes (discard, donate, sell). This is the purging/decluttering phase- your 1st step to getting organized.

You know this is a favorite tip of mine! Read more about how I created a capsule wardrobe using similar tips: capsule-wardrobe reduce your closet regain your life

Tip 3: Keep a donation bag in each of your clothes closets. 

For clothes that no longer fit or you just haven’t worn in ages… toss them in. When your bag fills, decide to donate or sell.

When organizing my laundry room it was nice to get rid of things we no longer needed by donating them to those in need!

I hope you enjoyed this post and ( if you live in the Metro Atlanta area, I can’t recommend Kenika enough!! )