Laundry Room Re-Do: Adding a DIY Mudroom!

Okay, so if you don't already know, I LOVE to organize!  I LOVE for everything to have it's own place and a label to go with it!  Sadly, my love for all-things-organized just never transferred into our utility room.  It has been the one place in our house that just drives me nuts!  When we moved in I attempted to organize it by adding some storage bins and even hanging a few curtains to hide the clutter, but it just never really worked for us in the ways that we needed it to.

Others bloggers and Pinterest have inspired me to rethink the space that we have and repurpose it to make it more usable.  With this thought in mind I brainstormed for days about how I could make this a room that we could use and love!

To give you an idea of the space, here is a little floor plan I worked up.

It isn't huge, but it's a decent amount of space to work with.  The only thing is...we needed this space to serve a lot of purposes...

1- place for our dog to eat on the floor

2-place for cats to eat on the dryer so the dog doesn't eat their food

3-location to put kitty tray (preferably as far away from door as possible)

4-easily be able to do laundry

5-store lots of odds and ends on the shelves without looking cluttered

6-store shoes that we wear often and don't want to keep in our room b/c we don't wear shoes on the carpet

7-create some sort of barrier in front of the cat tray so the dog can't stick her nose in there (gross, I know!)

8-position something that our large cat Pumpkin can jump on to get on the dryer to get her food (she's never had the skills needed to jump right up, and her ample size doesn't help!)

Our current set up does not meet all of this criteria, so with this in mind I started the redesign!

First thing...reorganize the shelves, take down the curtain that we never closed and often ended up soaking up water from the dog's bowl, push back the dog food area under the shelves to create more floor space and hang a bamboo shade!

ahhh, soooo much better!  And pushing back the dog bowls gave us so much more floor space!  It feels like we stretched the walls!  Now all of our storage is nice and tucked away behind this shade! LOVE IT!

Okay, this may seem minor, but in my quest to reduce clutter in here these plastic drawers were just screaming "messy" even though everything was nicely sorted into its own place!  So, a quick fix was using some leftover scrapbook paper and double sided tape to cut a piece of paper the size of the front of each drawer to hide the clutter!  Pure bliss!  I love it!  Sooooo much better!  

(I still need to make a label for that middle drawer!)

Now, onto the other side of the laundry room which has stored shoes, socks, hangers, coats and on the shelf is a bunch of fun stuff that I kept from my teaching days that I plan to use with Claire when she is a bit older.  This space was a disaster (and so embarrassing I don't want to post it) in it's old state, but now it is one of our favorite, most functional places in our whole house!  Meet our new "mud room"!  Please pardon the jumble of brightly colored storage on top...I am searching for the perfect fabric to hang to cover that section!  It's still in progress...

Now, onto the other side of the room.  Here is a big honkin' black bench that we "temporarily" shoved in here when we moved in (4 years ago) to help Pumpkin reach her food on the dryer and prevent the dog from getting to the cat tray.  As you can see, it is just wayyyyy too crowded, creating loads and piles of laundry I dread to do because I can hardly access it!  (I'm so embarrassed to post this...this is the room I never let anyone see when the come over, but I'm making an exception so you can see the dire need of the situation in here! HA!)

Bye bye old black bench and hello new spot for the dog food!  Seems to work just fine for Pumpkin and gives me LOTS more room too!  WOO-HOO!!  I think I've already done about 8 loads of laundry in this new room, I just love it.  Don't tell my husband, but I think it's my new "woman cave" HA!  

Oh- also taking down those pictures really cleaned up the space.  I have a plan for some new art using some old frames and scrap book paper.  I'll update when that happens!

Behind the door we hide all the cleaning stuff...nice and tucked away!

The ironing board found a new home on the back of the door thanks to an inexpensive over-the-door-ironing-board-holder from good ol Home Depot!  

Oh- I almost forgot to mention the lighting in here.  This is the new light...I forgot to take a "before" picture, but imagine about 6 feet of fluorescent tube lights.  This was an easy switch and didn't even require any major changes to the wiring or ceiling.

In fact, the old laundry room light was repurposed and is now hanging happily in the garage giving the hubby lots of light for those late night car washes and waxes--you know, when it finally dips below 95 degrees here!  He's pretty happy about that!

Back to my favorite little nook... this is the perfect spot to come in and take off your shoes!  This throw pillow totally completed the space and I was stoked my husband agreed to something pink (after all, this is my secret woman cave, right?!) HA!  I also added a rug to look nice but more importantly keep the floor dry if the dog drips water, yes she does that!

Hidden in this new ottoman from Target is plenty of space to stash socks, items to return, dry cleaning, etc! I love it and I especially like how it lets us utilize our space which is only 41 inches wide and about 30 inches deep, but now it feels so much larger!

Here is the mudroom in action!  These hooks are for my purse, diaper bag, jackets, scarves, etc!  Our shoes that we wear most often are nicely tucked into their cubbies!

And as a bonus on laundry day, this space serves double duty as a place to hang clean clothes and let other clothes drip dry!

All in all, we could't be more happy with this laundry room transformation.  It feels like we stretched our walls and added a whole new room!  I can hardly wait to use it everyday!  I have to wonder though, does anyone else have a space in their home that just doesn't work for them?  A space they just keep ignoring and not knowing what to do with?  I would love to see other ideas on making the most out of spaces!