Laundry Room Plans

Saturday, the new washer and dryer will become part of the family!  Now begins the fun winter project!  I would like to make an organized laundry area in a yucky, unfinished basement.  We have no plans of remodeling the basement, due to the many problems we have had with our drain backing up.  Plus it cost money...something we don't have enough of.  :-P

Here are the befores:

I know...ew.  Luckly, I have good bones to work with.  The shelves were already up when I moved into the house.  Say goodbye to the off-white washer and dryer!  Bye old friend. 

At the moment, this is our current dirty clothes storage.  The wicker hamper is for towels.  The hanging hampers, I got at Ikea for $5 for a set of two.  We have to keep most of the storage off the floor because the in fear of the drain backing up.  (Note, it doesn't back up often, maybe once a year, but when it does, ewwwwwwww...Mainly from tree roots.) 

Not to mention, I have a very sneaky kitty that likes to use buckets or laundry basekets as a litter box.

On the other side of the dryer, is more storage.

So thats the tour. 

The Plans...

I don't iron often, but when I do, it is a pain to drag out the ironing board and find a plug for the iron.  So I wanted a solution for that.  Here is what I wish I could have.

Image courtesy of Apartment Therapy

But, money will not allow this to happen, at not least right now.  Ikea use to have a cabinet with this option, but I can't find it on their website.  Anyone know if they discontinued it?  So here will be the cheap solution from Organize.com.

This way, everything will be stored in one place and easy to access.

We would need storage for the brooms and mops.  I have a broom closet in my kitchen, but I don't like to keep wet mops in it.  Not a pretty smell.  This is also at Organize.com.

Paint. 

I was lucky enough to find another, opps can of paint at Home Depot for $5! 

Here is the color.

Kind of a pinky/tan color.  I thought it was neutral enough and for $5, it works!

As for the shelves, I have a bunch of Ikea basekets I plan to use and other odds and ends.

This weekend, the paint will go up, along with the welcome of the new additions!