Laundry Room and Storage Room Organization

In the last month I was helping my friend get organized. It was a good little motivator for me and a realization that I actually really enjoy this and I have no excuse to not do it in my own home. Remember this post I did a LONG time ago were I said I was going to organizing my house. Well only 4 months later and I am finally half way done. I could go into my many excuses on why I have been slacking, but not every uplifting!


Let's have a refresher on the before...
Disclaimer (the room is tiny with no window, hard/impossible to get any good pictures)

Without any more fuss or delay, here is the finished Product!

Wait that's not it, maybe this is it?

I wish! I love the clean and simple approach with each rooms.. one day when we own our own house will I then design a room like the above, but until that day I am working with an old apartment that I cant change anything too.


ENOUGH dreaming here is how I tackled the room.
First, I got caught up on all the laundry and took all the recycling to the drop off.
Then I sat down and created a list of the areas and items I wanted stored in the room. I realized I had some great hidden storage areas I could use around the house and clear up some of the clutter. I took all the long, thin items (folding chairs, extra christmas wrap, ect) and placed under our bed. I then took all the items that I want to sell and placed ads online.


I next set up a bunch of my bins in the hallway for easy sorting.

I was using a huge clear bin for all my paints and home repairs/improvement items. I decided to split the contents into 3 small containers (paint, paint supplies, misc home repairs/improvement). It just made more sense especially when the huge container was full it was way too heavy.

On my top shelf I had a huge mess of my blankets and pillows. I thought about my biggest complaint about this area, that being if I wanted anything down from this pile, everything would come tumbling down with it. Simple solution was to use boxes and group similar items into the boxes. My husband was shocked that we had enough towels to fit into a big box. I explained to him that we don't have a linen closet and we only have 4 towels in the bathroom at any time. Plus we have two beach towels in the box. 
In the box labeled "Bedding" I used this idea I saw on Pinterest. It worked perfectly.

I love when I have all the same containers but I didn't want to spend much money on this project. I did buy a total of 4 small and 1 large clear bins everything else I already had and of course not ideal but I used boxes from our move to store some items. I personally like to use clear bins... I like to be able to see what is inside even if the bin is clearly labeled.

I am a huge recycler but sadly I was shocked when we moved to Regina how bad the recycling program is here. Thumbs up for the Alberta Government and their excellent recycling program. I don't recycle nearly as much as I did back home but I do recycle pop bottles, milk container and paper. 

On the bottom half of the recycling area I placed my tool box, sander and drill.


I have a bit of obsession for patterns, patterned fabric, patterned paper. Love it all. If you notice in the before pictures, there is a huge pile of fabric. I took all the small pieces and moved to display in my craft area (picture to come later in a different organization post) and everything else I stored in clear bins.

Here is the major problem corner before

After

This week I am focusing on adding some fun elements in the room. I am going to go through my 2 huge bin of home decor items and see what I can add to make the room more inviting.