Cure the Laundry Room Blues

While marble finishes and butler's pantries and even a move to the second floor are not in the immediate future for my laundry room, I did gather some excellent ideas for jazzing the room up without ripping down walls. Consider the following:

What do you really do there?
User habit is a key factor in planning your laundry room. "People will go to a lot of expense and build a beautiful laundry room with all this counter space," says professional organizing consultant Vicki Norris, "but then mom doesn't fold laundry in the laundry room; she dumps it on the couch and folds it while she's watching Oprah."

If that's your style, you may want to mount a TV on the wall in the laundry room so you can see it from your folding counter, or you may want to continue folding laundry on the couch and not include too much counter space in your laundry room.

Since laundry is a key part of what you do there, make sure the room works for getting the laundry done. If your laundry room is just six feet by six feet, for instance, you have to have enough room to open the door of your dryer before you think about putting in shelves.

You'll also want to consider wall-mounted shelves that are higher up so you have the necessary clearance around the dryer door. You need to fit laundry supplies close to the washer and dryer, so make sure shelves are the right width (too deep means supplies end up hidden behind each other so you over buy; too narrow and you can't fit in wide jugs).