Laundry Closet Organization

I love having our laundry closet upstairs by the bedrooms. I do not however, love that it is a closet. There is a serious lack of storage space with the one wire shelf we have in there. I wanted to keep all of my extra cleaning supplies in one place, but there just wasn't enough room. Here is what I started with:

Lovely, isn't it? I really wanted to install two cabinets with open shelving in between, but my handyman hubby said there wouldn't be enough room with where the light fixture is located. :(

So then I thought about installing another wire shelf above the existing one. But again, there wouldn't be enough room with the brackets (we would want to get a shelf that matched the one we already had). Plus, I already have had to climb onto the washer to reach the items located at the back of the shelf, so it just wasn't realistic. Back to the drawing board...

I finally decided to utilize the space under the shelf since it was just kind of wasted area (and I'd be able to reach it!). We hit up the dollar store and bought four baskets with handles. I chose blue to add a pop of color amongst all the white going on in there. We also bought some S hooks from the hardware store to hang the baskets from the wire shelf.

When we got home, I started by taking everything out of the closet. Then I wiped down everything...walls, floor, doors, washer and dryer, the wire shelf itself. There was spilled laundry detergent on the walls and wire shelf from the previous owners, plus a ton of lint everywhere!

I started to put everything back in the closet by grouping like things together. I put the extras toward the back of the shelf so as to hopefully eliminate the need to climb on top of the washer to reach them.

I think it still looks a little bit cluttered, but I had a lot to fit on that little shelf. I would have containerized more, but a lot of the items were large and somewhat bulky and I don't think I would have been able to get them out of the containers easily. Here are some close ups of the baskets:

Left: Laundry Supplies (dryer sheets, bleach pens, sample dryer sheets, sample laundry detergent, etc)
Right: Laundry Detergent Making Supplies (grater, baking soda, extra laundry bars, measuring cups, etc)

Left: Cleaning Supplies (microfiber cloths, extra cleaning gloves, etc)
Right: Miscellaneous light bulbs

Let's get one more before and after side-by-side:

Project Cost: $7.54

Linked up at Pretty Well Organized