A sudsy solution

Jared and I started our marriage with a decade-old washer/dryer pair his parents were nice enough to hand down. We were so glad to finally be rid of quarters and card swipes every time we needed a clean shirt, so this old-school duo, tucked quietly behind a pair of accordion doors, felt like quite a luxury. They weren’t the most beautiful washer and dryer in the world (have you seen that LG SteamWasher? Loooooove it!), but it was an out of sight, out of mind kind of thing. They washed. They dried. We were golden.

But all good things come to an end, and when the ol’ dryer took his final spin (that last load of towels was just more than the poor guy could handle), we decided to replace the pair rather than force our dryer to spend eternity without his sudsy first mate. So we headed to Lowe’s and made the first grown-up purchase of our young married life: a cute-as-a-button, energy-efficient Whirlpool Duet Sport washer/dryer combo that just so happened to be on super duper sale that day (woo hoo!). The guy at the store said they’d deliver our purchase in about a week.

When we got home, we decided to measure the size of our new washer and dryer to see how they compared with the old ones. Jared started the measuring tape at the back of the laundry closet and started pulling it out until it reached the right length. When he stopped, the tape was exactly 1 1/2 inches past the hinges for the closet’s folding doors. Oops.

Now we had a problem. We could either hightail it back to Lowe’s and cancel our purchase or remove the closet doors entirely. We chose the latter. Then came problem No. 2. By no means was I madly in love with the folding closet doors, but man oh man, did I swoon at their clutter coverage. Laundry soap, dryer sheets, hangers, light bulbs, phone books: All those odds and ends without a designated spot found their place on the shelves above the washer and dryer. And now there it was, in plain view. I was airing my clutter for all to see.

So we needed clutter coverage, and we needed it fast. And we needed to do it on the cheap (we just bought that grown-up washer and dryer, you know?). Here’s the solution we came up with:

• Bins, bins and more bins: Target carries these great fabric bins in all different sizes. We figured a few large ones and one small one should do the trick. The small one holds laundry items (detergent, dryer sheets, bleach, stain remover); one of the large ones holds all my painting doo-dads (drop clothes, rollers, trays, paint brushes); and the other large one holds anything that doesn’t fit somewhere else (light bulbs, gigantic trash bags, those jeans I bought and never wore). So the clutter’s still all there, but it’s happy and hidden. Whew! There were a few color options, too, but we preferred the blue for a punch of crisp, clean color.

• And a basket to boot: Crazily enough, this apartment has no linen closet. For a long time I stashed all the extra towels, blankets and sheets in my closet, but it was super inconvenient when guests (or sleep zombie Jared) wanted to grab a new towel. We picked up this simple laundry basket (also from Target), filled it with plain white towels and slid it up there next to the bins. Now our guests can grab towels at will. And I have more room for shoes. Eep!

• Hook handiness: Is this lucky or what? Our reusable shopping bags totally blend with the laundry closet color scheme, so rather than stuff them away in one of the bins (where they would be hidden from sight and inconvenient to grab), we stuck a simple white hook on the closet wall and hung them up. And now that they stare me in the face on a daily basis, I actually remember to take them with me shopping. Success!

So there you have it: our sudsy solution to a laundry conundrum. Here’s the best part. When the Lowe’s guy delivered the washer and dryer a week later, he told Jared how glad he was that we had already removed the closet doors — because so many young folks in apartments don’t even think to measure the size of their space before making a big purchase. Pffff. That’s crazy talk.

XO,
Katrina