Tackle it Tuesday: The Laundry Room
April 15, 2008
Ok, this is one of those tackles that makes me look around and wonder WHY on Earth it took so long to figure this out. Ah well, that’s life, right?
My laundry room has always been a messy area with piles of dirty laundry arranged on the floor - one pile for whites, one for colors, one for reds, one for jeans, one for towels and linens. As you can imagine, with a family of 5, those piles get big and topple over on a pretty regular basis!
When you have little boys doing their part to carry dirty laundry downstairs to the laundry room, that doesn’t exactly contribute to the neatness factor. I’ve never caught them at it, but I suspect sometimes those piles of laundry are a bit too tempting and get jumped in too!
Sure, this isn’t exactly a life-altering burst of inspiration, but it’s amazing how a half-dozen plastic bins can make a huge difference! Last weekend, I found 32 gallon plastic bins on clearance for about $7 each (ok, so they’re pastel blue and purple, Easter colors, but who cares? They’re in the laundry room!). I bought one for each of my laundry piles and voila! No more laundry on the floor, and the whole laundry area takes up a lot less space.
This was such a spur-of-the moment Tackle, I don’t even have before pictures (although if you saw my Basement Storage Room Tackle, you’ll get a pretty good feel for what the laundry room looked like….). Here’s the After picture though - I’m sure you can see the vast improvement! That reminds me, I need to switch laundry while I’m down there taking pictures!
As an added bonus, the clothes are easier to sort now too, because the piles are clearly separated. So now I have boys who can carry dirty laundry to the basement and put their own clean clothes away, I feel a lesson on separating laundry coming on! (Hey, at least I can rest easy knowing that they won’t go to college without a clue how to achieve clean clothes.)
Posted by Tricia @ 10:45 am in Family Organization, Tackle It Tuesday
Yay! Great job. I love getting these tackles done. It makes me feel so good.
April 15th, 2008 at 2:11 pm
Awesome tackle! No way I could share pics of my laundry room at the moment. It’s kinda scary.
I will share my sunflowers though. Do stop by.
For your daily dose of vintage goodness & a bit of silliness, stop by Confessions of an Apron Queen, the home of Vintage Thingies Thursdays.
April 15th, 2008 at 2:32 pm
i wish my kids could do that! we’re working on it!!
April 15th, 2008 at 3:29 pm
I won’t claim they’re perfect, but I’m willing to overlook a lot to have somebody else do the laundry occasionally! We just take it one step at a time. First they learned to haul dirty laundry down (it’s great fun to throw laundry bags down the stairs!). Then I got their dresser drawers labeled so they could put their own clean clothes away. Now we’re working on sorting. I can’t WAIT until they’re old enough to pair socks!!
April 15th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
Looks great! We do that too–separate laundry baskets for each color (whites, pastels, darks) It makes it so much easier on laundry day.
April 15th, 2008 at 5:50 pm
I’m absolutely amazed at how long it took us to figure this one out!
April 16th, 2008 at 8:39 am
Very nice girl, I am glad those bins were on sale for you, what a blessing.
Be sure to stop by my blog for the new button codes and a giveaway :o)
Hopefully we’ll see you next week.
April 16th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
I like the us of, we and I…who came up with the bin idea again
love you
April 21st, 2008 at 1:15 pm