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

Master Suite: DIY Linen Closet

One thing our new house was lacking was a linen closet. There is a small closet in the other upstairs  bathroom, but I wanted one by our master bathroom. When we remodeled the shower space in our master bathroom, we had to decide what to do with the empty space left behind were the old shower stall was.

Old Shower Stall

We decided it would be a good idea to put a linen closet with open shelving in that space. We knew it would be one of the last projects we tackled on the bathroom, so we had the contractors put up the drywall, but said we would do the rest.

Then I painted the walls with Olympic Paint's Sterling Silver and Blue Fjord in a semi-gloss. I also painted the ceiling with some white ceiling paint.

Then my hubby installed 3 shelves. We spaced them 18 inches from the top of the space. We really wanted to maximize the depth the space offered, so we bought 1 x 2 x 4 ft melamine shelves and cut them down to fit. I used an iron-on white melamine edge on the part of the shelves that would be facing out. It was really easy to put on. Next up, my husband installed brackets using drywall anchors and screws and made sure they were level all the way across. Finally, he put the shelves in and screwed them in to the brackets. These shelves are very sturdy! I plan to get some baskets for storage and eventually, my husband wants to build a laundry basket cabinet that slides under the bottom shelf. We love the storage space this has added to our bathroom!

Project Cost: $72.03

Master Suite: The Closet

When we were house hunting, all the houses we looked at had wire shelving in every closet and I hate wire shelving! The hangers don't always slide right and anything folded on the shelves gets lines on it. We decided to take out the five wire shelves in our master closet and put in melamine shelving.

First we had to decide whether to DIY or purchase a closet kit from the hardware store. Our closet is 12 feet along the main wall so we had a lot of space to cover and we knew it wouldn't be cheap. The first closet system we looked at was going to be about $658. The second closet system at a different store was going to cost about $520. We tried calculating doing it ourselves and figured it was going to be more complicated to build what we wanted (especially after looking at the nice kits), so we scratched that idea altogether. We decided to go with the cheaper option.

After we took out all of the shelving, we had to patch up the holes. There were a lot!

Then I painted the closet with Olympic's Country Beige with a satin sheen. Doesn't that look better?

 Next up was to assemble and install the closet system. I planned to do this part on my own, however, it involved making sure things were square and I had to call in reinforcements for help (aka my hubby)!

Now I have so much storage space that I don't even know what to do with it all!

Project Cost $519.06