Tips for Living and Cleaning with a Small Laundry Room

Whether you are a stay-at-home mom or a working-outside-of-home mom, laundry management is something every woman in every family experiences. Some excel at it, some make do, still others delegate. While I have been a stay-at-home mom for many years now, I had a brief stint of working outside of home when my son was a tiny boy, so I have done laundry management from either of those perspectives. Let’s discuss laundry management in which you have only a small, closet-sized laundry space in which to work.

Keep on top of the laundry by first and foremost organizing your small laundry space, regardless of the size of said laundry space and maybe most especially because it is so small, organization is key. In the case of a small laundry space where multiple containers for pre-sorting is not an option, when you start your laundry day, sort the entire pile of laundry and replace it in the basket or hamper already sorted. Have your detergent, stain treatment and fabric softener and the like within easy reach, even the smallest laundry closet can have a wall-mounted shelf to hold these items and keep them within easy ready as you tackle the laundry. If for some odd reason a wall-mounted laundry shelf is not an option, a caddy or plastic tub can hold all your laundry supplies and sit atop the washer or dryer waiting for use.

When tackling the laundry chore, as you sort, do any stain pre-treating that you like to do if you did not manage to get the stained item rinsed in cold water immediately upon occurrence. I, for one, always forget something or other when it comes to stain treatment, so I simply try to get the stained item rinsed in cold water immediately and then, when washing, use a good quality detergent that has served me well nearly every time. Pre-treating stains before or at the sorting point will make the laundry chore, the laundry day, go a bit smoother because then you can toss the load in quickly and make the washer-to-dryer changeover faster as well. This will also give the stain treatment a bit more time to work its magic.

Fold the clothes from the dryer immediately or very shortly thereafter. I have to add the shortly thereafter because sometimes, in a busy laundry day, immediately just does not happen and the dryer is needed for the next load. But the sooner the clothes are folded, the less wrinkled they will be, therefore possibly making less work for later.

While a small laundry space is not what most of us would choose to have, it does force one to be more organized and efficient about getting the laundry chore done and out of the way before the baskets or hampers overflow into the rest of the living space.