In this video I give you a tour of how I organize my small laundry room closet and show you everything I do to stay organized while getting laundry done!
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Hi everyone, it’s Alejandra. And in this video, I’m going to share with you guys how I’m organizing all of my – all the contents inside of my laundry closet. So we live in a townhouse and we have a laundry closet that’s upstairs next to the bedroom. We don’t have a dedicated laundry room that’s downstairs with the folding area or any of that. So maximizing space is super important.
Organizing a Small Laundry Closet
So this is our laundry closet. And we have a stackable washer and dryer and that’s about it. There’s really no room to like put things – I mean there are some room to put things on top of the washer & Dryer but other than that, there’s like no real storage. So we had to create our own storage.
What I did was I added an over-the-door rack just like this to the door for all of the cleaning supplies and things related to doing the laundry.
How to Organize a Small Laundry Room Closet
Now, nothing is actually installed inside the door, it just hangs over the door then there’s a standard that goes all the way down that holds all these baskets down here that’s flexible. You can just move these up and down, higher or lower depending upon what you’re storing. And then I left the top part empty so I could hang – so I could add over-the-door hooks over there to hang my ironing board. I just have a small ironing board because I hate ironing so I try and buy wrinkle-free clothes and I tell Ed the same thing because neither one of us likes to iron. So we just have a small one just in case.
And then yes, that’s just hanging with two over-the-door hooks at the very top. And then over here, I have my Flip and Fold. That’s the tool that I use to get the perfect fold with t-shirts inside the drawers. And I have my folding mat right here which I will get to at the very end of the video. So that’s everything in the door. You can see that I’ve totally maximized my space. And now, I can actually store things inside my laundry closet.
And then over here, on this wall, I have a – this is a bag organizer from IKEA. It was $1.99 and I got it recently. I showed you guys this in my small budget organization video. And you’re supposed to put plastic bags inside like these bags but I use it for cleaning rugs because those needed a home. And now, they’re just super simple to grab. I can just grab one whenever I need it and just toss it back when I’m done, after washing it.
Laundry Organization Tip: Use a Bag Holder to Store Rags in the Laundry Room
Right here, I just have a trash bag that just hangs on the rag organizer for lint and other trash. I’ll just take it out and put it into the trash. And then if I find coins or ChapStick, I’ll just put it inside of this little organizer that’s magnetic and then it just hangs on the washer. So that stays right there.
Over here on the left wall, how I’ve maximized space is I put a collapsible laundry hamper and it’s just hanging on a Command hook and it’s collapsible so it saves space. I don’t have one of those bulky laundry baskets that just sit on top of the washer and takes up space. This is out of the way from a side of the wall and all you do is you unclip it and it turns into a full-size laundry hamper.
Tips for Laundry Organization
So laundry can be one of the easiest things to do. Yet, laundry can also be one of the most difficult things to keep organized because there are so many moving parts and pieces to doing a laundry. You have to take the clothes out of the hamper, put them in the wash, take them out of the wash, put them in the dryer, take them out of the dryer, bring them to a folding area, fold them, and then put them back in your closet or your dresser. There’s just so many parts and pieces that everything has to just happen like after each process or each phase is finished. It’s easy to get sidetracked and forget your clothes in the wash or forget that your clothes are in the dryer.
One thing I do that helps me remember when the wash is done or when the dryer is done is to set a timer. We just moved to this house and with this washer and dryer, and there’s no buzzer, there’s no beeps or anything. Whenever the wash is done, it just stops. It doesn’t make a noise. Whenever the dryer is done, it just stops. It just stops so there’s no loud buzzer or anything.
So what I’ve been doing is I downloaded an iPhone app for timing my wash and timing my dryer. So I’m going to show you exactly what it looks like. And it has been super helpful because I always have my phone nearby or in the house and I can hear a beep.
Laundry Organizing Tip: If you have trouble hearing the laundry buzzer, use an app to remind you to switch your laundry
Whenever I put a load of laundry in the washer, I’ll just hit washer on the app and then I’ll just set the time for 45 minutes. The wash takes like between 40 and 45 minutes for our washer so I set it for 45 minutes just to be safe. And then I hit start. And then you can see the water level is going back and forth and the timer is going and it says the time you started and the time it’s going to end. And then when it ends, the phone beeps and it notifies you that your wash is done. So that’s super helpful way to keep your laundry process organized when you can’t hear the laundry buzzers.
Then you can do the same thing with the dryer. Dryer normally takes like 90 minutes. So I’ll set my timer for one and a half hours. Here we go. I’ll hit start. Then you can see the dryer going back and forth. Your timer started for 90 minutes then this will just beep when you’re done. And then this is also a cool app because it has the info right here of all the different symbols for your clothes so if you just got a new shirt and you’re not sure if you can put it in the washer or the dryer, you could look for the symbols. Sometimes the symbol is not always defined on the tag but you can come here to your app and just look for what the symbol means.
That’s just the app that I’ve been using. I’ll put the link to the name of the app underneath the video. You can check it out if your washer or dryer does not have timers.
On a related side note, if you are constantly trying to stay on top of your laundry schedule check out my laundry tracker checklist.
Where to Fold Laundry When Space is Limited
Once your clothes are dry you need to fold them, what you want to do is to immediately fold your laundry so they’re not wrinkled inside the dryer because when they’re wrinkled then you need to iron or you need to rewash. Speaking of rewash, if you don’t switch your laundry from the washer to the dryer immediately and you leave it for like a day, maybe even two days then molds will start to appear. Your clothes will smell and then you have to rewash, wasting more water, wasting more detergents, and wasting more time.
So it’s so important to, when your wash is done, move it to the dryer immediately then when it’s done drying, fold it immediately. So what I’ve been doing to keep my laundry organized – what I used to do in my old house, we used to live in a condo and I would take the clothes out of the dryer and I would go to my sofa and I would start folding all my clothes right there because there was plenty of space.
Now that we’re in the new house and the laundry closet is upstairs, I don’t want to bring my clothes downstairs to the sofa and fold them there so I wanted to create a folding area upstairs. There was really no space, so I had to create a folding area. So this is what I did.
I am using a big mat. Now, this is an activity mat for kids. It’s actually made for LEGOs or for small pieces that your kids play with. They can actually play on this mat and then it turns into a bag to store all the toys.
But I’m using it for a different purpose. I use this bag/mat to take all my clothes out of the dryer, bring them into my bedroom, lay it on the floor and fold all the clothes on top of the mat (so I’m not folding on the dirty floor). Let me just show you exactly what I do here. So I just open the bag a little bit just like this. It just hangs over the laundry closet door when it’s not in use. I come inside the dryer and I just stuff all my clothes inside of the bag. And you can actually fit a large amount of laundry inside because the bag is so big.
Now, the bag is filled with clothes. I can just put it on my back, and now I’m ready to go to the bedroom and fold the clothes. But before I go to the bedroom, I want to make sure to empty my lint traps. So what I’m going to do is just take the lint out of the lint trap just like that. I’m going to put it inside the trash bag, right there, nice, easy, and convenient.
So then I’m going to take my dryer sheets out of the dryer and I’m going to use this to kind of clean the edges around the dryer because sometimes there is – just like lint, they get other places and just like a clean a bit down just like that. Take the lint out. Close the dryer. Put it in your trash bag. And now, you’re ready to go and fold all your clothes.
Limited Space? Create Your Own Portable Laundry Folding Station
I just brought all my clothes from the laundry closet in this bag. Now, I’m just going to open it and I have an instant folding area. So it’s perfect for people that have not a lot of space and not a designated folding area to just use this mat. Now, I can just move my clothes freely and I know they’re not going to get dirty from the floor if I haven’t vacuumed recently. So now, I can just begin folding and when I’m done folding then I could just begin putting all the clothes away.
So anyways, I hope this video was helpful. If you want more information on the products I showed, you can see the description below and I’ll put links to everything that I talked about. And that’s everything that I want to share with you guys. I hope this video was helpful and I’ll see you soon. Bye!
