A Simple Way to Organize Laundry Room Cabinets

I’ve been trying to find small ways to organize my life and house, one step at a time. And that’s really hard with small spaces.

Our laundry room is tiny, and also houses our water heater, furnace, and water softener. There’s really no room to move around, let alone decorate and make it look super fancy. 

The house came with built-in cabinets, and we just threw random things in there for storage space.

But there were a few things that were driving me crazy, and I knew it was time for more simple solutions and a well-organized laundry room. If you’re looking to organize your laundry room cabinets, let me show you how I did mine.

Take it a little at a time

If you have ADHD like I do, then you might get overwhelmed looking at the big picture that is your laundry space. It seems impossible to go through everything, and your brain can’t seem to break it down into smaller tasks.

Let me tell you: You don’t have to do this all in one day. I did this a little at a time, over the span of a couple weeks. A little bit goes a long way, and progress is progress. Start with 5 minutes, and stop after that if it’s too much. You’ll get there!

Step 1: Take inventory

First things first. I took a step back and looked at how I was utilizing this small space. I realized that the cabinet doors were getting in my way- when I opened the washer lid, I couldn’t open the left door of the cabinet. It almost made me feel claustrophobic having to constantly close one door to open another for my laundry essentials.

So, I had my husband remove the doors. He looked at me funny when I first made the request, but just that one thing made the room look more open. It made my ADHD self more excited to keep going, and now I love the open shelf look.

Step 2: Throw out, donate, or repurpose

Next I looked at all the stuff we just threw in the cabinet. We keep chalk, bubble wands, and other water play items on the top shelves, as well as other cleaning supplies. We had WAY too many bubble wands for just one child, so I emptied some of them into the other ones and threw those out.

We also had supplies to make our own detergent from back when our daughter wore cloth diapers. And that was…. nine years ago. That tells you how much I pay attention to this room. Here’s what I ended up doing with the random stuff:

• Arm and Hammer Washing Soda: Now that I know it’s in there, my plan is to use it on my laundry days until it’s all gone.
• OxiClean: I’ll just use it with particularly stained clothes until it’s all used up.
• Laundry pods and other liquid detergent: I frequently get little samples of the pods and never use them. So I’ll just use them up in the next few washes!

Step 3: Use containers to sort

I have ADHD- therefore, I believe that everything can be solved with containers. It doesn’t always work that way, but I can always dream, right?

I just went to Dollar Tree for them, which is honestly a dangerous place if you’re on an organizing mission. My store has a whole wall full of storage bins and plastic containers, and I was so tempted to just buy one of everything.

I managed to come home with just 4 matching ones though, and they slide really nicely into the cabinets. They’re seriously a great way to group similar items together and give me more storage space. I also use bins in my kitchen pantry!

Here’s what I used these clear bins for:

Microfiber cloths

I used to keep these in one of our kitchen drawers. Then I started buying and using more, and that drawer just got too cluttered. I’m still trying to figure out whether I should put the regular cleaning products here too, instead of in the kitchen. But for now, I’m keeping all of my microfiber cloths in the laundry room.

Dusters

I bought the industrial-sized box of dusters from Sam’s Club, and, well…  I don’t dust enough to go through them quickly. And I didn’t like how the box looked in the cabinet, so I stuffed all the extra dusters in one of the containers.

Washer pods

This is only temporary until I use them all up, but now at least they’re all together. And I feel like I have extra storage space now, since they’re not just stacked in random places.

Outside toys

We had a LOT of chalk. Like, a gallon-sized bag plus a small box. I downsized by throwing out the tiny pieces, and now its home is in a container along with the remaining bubble wands and the random arm floaties.

I still feel like this is the perfect place for them. They’re right next to the garage door, and they’ll stay safe and in-tact rather than being somewhere in the garage.

Step 4: Get an extra laundry basket

I do laundry on Mondays and Thursdays, and I always wash towels separately. So when I go through our bedrooms’ laundry baskets, I usually throw all the towels on the floor to wait for their turn to get washed.

Well… that doesn’t always happen the same day. Those towels will sit on the floor for days and look ugly. And we don’t exactly have a lot of floor space.

So I went to Meijer and bought a $10.00 hamper to slide close to the washing machine. Now I can throw the towels in their new home and my brain isn’t occupied with worrying about floor clutter.

The final product

As you can see, it’s not perfect. But for right now, it works.

The laundry detergent, dryer sheets, and other laundry supplies are on the lower cabinets, while the items I use less often are on the upper cabinets. And this makes laundry day a LOT simpler for me. Everything has a designated place and I can tell a huge difference in the brainpower I use to wash clothes.

I’m still trying to decide whether I should put the baking soda in the cabinets as well. I don’t know how much weight these cabinets can hold… but I guess there’s one way to find out!

Once that’s off the dryer, I’ll have a bigger work surface and easy access to the dryer buttons. Anything that requires little thought is perfect for me.

So, what does all this mean for you? There are tons of laundry room organization ideas out there, and this is just one of them. This may not work if you have a super tiny laundry room with no cabinets, or no laundry area at all. The important thing is just having clean clothes, and you do what it takes to get there.

What are your storage solutions for your laundry room and cabinets? Leave a comment and give us more ideas!