Tips for making your laundry more functional

The laundry is probably one of the less popular rooms in the house – and a poorly designed laundry can lead to us spending more time in there than is necessary.

Thankfully, with some clever design ideas and storage solutions, you can make your laundry more functional and a much more pleasant place to be when performing those menial tasks that we unfortunately all have to do.

Here’s a list of some of our favourite ideas:

• Constantly bending down to take clothes out of a front loading washing machine or dryer is doing our backs no favours, so why not raise them? Simply adding a small platform underneath is more than enough to solve this problem.
• Keep everything that you use regularly, such as stain remover, laundry detergent and fabric softener, in arm’s reach of the washing machine. Consider adding a shelf above your washing machine for these items, or store them in a box or basket on top of your washing machine to avoid them being knocked over during the washing process.
• Add a pull-out ironing board to solve the dilemma of where to store your ironing board when it isn’t in use. Plus, let’s face it – an ironing board isn’t the most attractive household item, so having it stored away in a draw is a great solution.
• Save time on sorting out dirty clothes for washing by having two or three separate hampers – one for whites, one for colours/darks and one for towels/sheets. Now you just need to train the rest of the family to put their clothes in the correct hamper!
• Go one step further by installing hamper draws – that way, dirty clothes will be hidden away out of sight (but hopefully not out of mind!), making your laundry seem clean and tidy at all times.
• If you have room, consider installing a bench in your laundry. That way, you can immediately fold clothes that you take out of the dryer instead of having to put them back in the basket and lug them to another room, which will more than likely make those creases reappear.
• Add a small shelf with hooks to the wall to hang those odd socks that always seem to appear after washing.
• If you have clothes that need to drip-dry, install a fold-down drying rack to the wall instead of lugging a rack outside or to another room.