Hands up who treats their laundry as the Miscellaneous room which accumulates all the mess and mysteries of your home. As the laundry is a service room, we tend to think that it can remain as dirty as the clothes we carelessly toss in there. Treating the laundry as anything other than a sanctuary is a missed opportunity. You won’t resent spending time doing washing if it is in clean and presentable space, and you won’t need to feel ashamed in locking the door if you have surprise guests stopping by.

Start with storage

If you haven’t embraced storage then your life must be a living chaos. The amount of knick-knacks humans accumulate is truly shocking, but why do they all end up in the laundry? It’s because no one really owns the laundry as a room, it’s a shared space and one not on display to friends and visitors. Fitting out your room with the right laundry baskets is the best place to start. This will immediately establish order; clean, dirty, whites, colours and blacks. If you have inherited the laundry baskets you own today, then chances are you are not aware of all the options available; hip-hugging, eco-friendly and the accommodating flex baskets.

Hide the sins

At some point the world decided that the best colour for a laundry was white. White tiles, white vinyl and every other surface available was coloured white. It does promote the sense of cleanliness, but only if the room itself is clean. The rest of the time it amplifies mess and highlights marks of the room. Nothing gives a room a new lease on life like a paint job, so you can show your laundry some love with a fresh lick of paint. Try and pick a tone that can hide a multitude of sins, medium or dark shades are best. If you really want to make it a bit eclectic, use a funky wallpaper design and some floating floorboards.

Bring some life

Bringing a dash of greenery to your laundry will really step up the feel of the room, and may change the way you think of the space. You will be far less likely to toss all of your clutter in a room that has beautiful plants on display, and you will definitely not keep the room sealed up and closed off from the rest of the house with plants needing light and air. Choose plants of different sizes for variety - a large fern in a big pot and small succulents on shelves and tables in the room.

Invest in quality

We take great pride in the labels we wear and the brands we use on our body. But when it comes to cleaning and washing products, whatever is on sale is usually fine to buy. This mentality might be sucking the love out of your laundry, promoting that quick and cheap exchange. Buy some high quality or sustainable products that you will enjoy using, and cap it off with some nice smelling hand soap and hand cream for when you are done with the dirty work.

It’s hard to get some excitement going when it comes to discussing the laundry, but build a space that you want to spend time in and you will notice a different flow in your home. These changes are easy to make, but the true test will come in maintaining your domestic paradise. Make it a household priority to respect the space, and start enjoying laundry time!

• Prev
• Next