My husband and I own a small house in North Austin that we love dearly. Our house is about 1200 square feet, which should really be enough space for two people; however, we tend to accumulate stuff and so we are always having to pare down and carefully organize so that our lives do not become swamped with clutter. We did most of the remodeling on our house ourselves, but after 10 years of work, we finally had a professional company named At Your Service come in and finish the last remaining work about 3 years ago. The best thing we had them do was to close in the part of the garage that used to hold our washer and dryer, and actually turn it into a laundry room. It is so wonderful to have a clean, warm place to do laundry. However, it is a very small room, so we had to come up with some creative ways to to fit everything inside.
We started with a modular shelving system from Lowes that allowed us to have storage space above the washer and dryer and along one wall. Then my amazing husband figured out that we could use the same shelf brackets to hold up laundry baskets (also from Lowes.) We did a test run in the store to make sure the rim of the basket would stay on the bracket. It was very successful, and so we created a double row of hanging baskets which we use to sort the clothes into loads. The baskets are easily removable so they can also be used to carry clean clothes into other rooms. For linen storage, I use boxes from the Container Store for the table linens we use every day, and then on the high shelves above I have space to store my family's prize winning quilts. I also adopted a pretty and useful notion from a set of sheets that I bought, and I now tie my clean sheet sets together with a ribbon which makes them easy to grab and carry into the bedrooms.
Behind the washer and dryer, we added more shelving which allowed us to store laundry soap, cleaning supplies, and the bulk organic liquid soaps and lotions that we use in the kitchen and bathrooms. Then my husband had the second amazing idea to add a hanging bar for clothes drying over the washer and dryer. This was actually very easy because the shelving units from Lowes have an application for closets and so they make clip on units that allow hanging bars to be added directly to the shelf. Having this space for drying works perfectly because the air intake for the house is also in this room so it ends up being one of the driest places in the house. I actually seldom use the dryer, because I find that it is very hard on clothes.
On the third wall we set up a rack that would hold all of our mops and brooms, as well as an ironing board rack. The room is so small that I can't get far enough back to get a picture of this wall. And then we finished out by adding a pocket door to lead into the breakfast nook area, which works perfectly because it doesn't intrude on the eating space when opened.
The final wall was an odd deep space created by the necessity of carving out a chunk of the room for the water heater closet. We were able to find a deep set of shelves at the container store which is perfect for long boxes which store wrapping paper, and more archival boxes for my wedding dress and some 19th century dresses from my husband's family.
So, one very small space with many useful ideas. I find it amazing how a little creativity can make the most out of great limitations.
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