Spring Cleaning - Laundry Closet Redesign!

"A place for everything, and everything in its place." 

This has been my new maxim while reorganizing our current house. One of our biggest issues here is storage; without much furniture and hardly any closet space, there simply isn't enough room for even the basics. It's been my goal while searching for a new job to also spend some time making our home more cozy and functional. The laundry room re-do is probably my favorite project so far!

Here is our laundry "room" before. It's a closet off the small hallway between our garage door (on the left here) and our kitchen.

You can see how the previous owners left it: a single, poorly installed shelf, stained walls, and a couple of nails in odd places.

First thing first! I ripped out the old shelving (keeping the shelf, since I chose a shelving system that could re-use it). They used drywall anchors rather than properly hanging anything on studs, so there were a lot of big holes to fill.

Once all the spackle was dry, I painted the whole inside of the closet a medium gray. This color was on the "rejected colors" shelf at home depot and was one of those nifty paint-and-primer in one types that are normally a bit pricey. I paid $7 for this gallon and didn't even use a quarter of it!

The next big thing was the shelving! One of the things I did like about the previous "design" was the style of shelf. These wire shelves are very sturdy, the gaps aren't big enough for much to fall through, and the lack of flat surfaces means less dust collection. The shelves were easy to cut to size with a metal saw. 

I took it a step further and went with a track shelving system that would allow us to change the height of our shelves to fit whatever we decide to put here. The main anchor is at the top of the wall, shown here. I'm very lucky to have an amazing husband who patiently walked me through every step, and completed all the work for me when I got tired. He also decided that we needed more light in there, and purchased and installed the light fixture for me. 

For the bottom shelf, I wanted to ensure that nothing could fall behind the washer and dryer, so I took an idea from Pinterest and put a wood shelf right along the top of the machines.

We gained so much storage space with this that we still don't have it filled up, months later. I love that the shelves are easy to move (we've already moved them twice!) and that it would be trivial for us to add another in the future. I'm looking forward to this summer now that we have space to store all of the canned fruits and veggies we love to make!  

I still need to install hooks on the sides of the closet for the ironing board, brooms, and other things, but overall I'm pretty pleased with the outcome.

Now, if only I could make my pantry this functional.... :)

How have you solved some storage issues in your home?