Household chores are unavoidable, especially washing loads of dirty clothes piling up in the laundry room. Setting up the perfect laundry room in your home will help save time and effort doing a chore that’s got to be done… at least once every couple of weeks. (Or at least once a day if you have children!)

The number of loads of laundry per week depends on how many people are living in the household. For example, a family of four might have around 8 loads per week, including clothes, towels, bedding, and other items. If you don’t have a maid, laundry service, or kids who can help, that’s at least one load a day for you to do –– not fun after a long workday.

Make things easier on yourself and check out these tips for setting up a functional laundry room.

The amount of square footage in your laundry room determines what kind of setup you’ll be able to have.

• Top loader washers have the lid on top, which tends to work well for taller people, but not so easy for the shorter folks. Reaching to the bottom of the washer is difficult (nearly impossible if you’re pregnant!) If the top loader won’t drain though, it’s easier to take wet clothes out of the top of a drum of standing water.
• Front loader washers have a door in front of the machine that opens outward (just like dryers). Front loaders require a lot of bending to insert and retrieve clothes. If the machine malfunctions with water inside, you cannot remove the clothes without opening the door and having water pour all over the floor.
• Stackable washers and dryers are just that — units that sit on top of each other. Stackable combos allow for more space in the laundry room to use for storage, folding and hanging clothes, or fitting another appliance. Today’s stackables have better venting systems to prevent mold, “smart” features to let you know the laundry is clean, and the ability to “communicate” with each other.
  
  Measure the space available in your laundry room before buying any type of washer and dryer.

Every laundry room needs enough space to lay out the clean clothes, especially if you want to divide the piles for each family member.

Wall-mounted cabinets are functional and attractive — they hide stuff like detergent, liquid fabric softeners, and dryer sheets. Building your own cabinets is generally a more cost-effective way of adding them to an existing room (although hiring a general contractor is a good thing to do if you cannot pound a nail straight).

Vertical storage gives you floor-to-ceiling cabinets or shelves beside that stackable washer and dryer. 

Install clothing rods to hang dry (or wet) clothes. Adding over-the-door extended hooks increases space for hanging clothes you’ve just pulled out of the dryer.

Setting up a long tabletop bench makes it easier to fold and lay clothes out after you’ve removed them from the dryer. You can keep a basket there, too, for the stuff you find in pants pockets. Built-in covered countertops work well over front-load washers and dryers.

Professional storage solutions are tailored to every inch of the laundry room, providing hamper storage, cabinets on top of and between machines, and hanger racks.

Utility sinks in the laundry room are helpful for pre-treating or rinsing off a clothing item — especially if it is caked with mud — before putting it in the washer.

In laundry rooms, flooring and countertops should be water resistant. Choose between ceramic tile, laminate, stone or concrete, or strong vinyl that won’t easily tear.

Rolling carts are convenient to have nearby for transporting laundry.

Separating the whites, lights, and darks is a typical process for clothes washing because you don’t want to mix the reds with the whites, of course. But you can also separate clothes per family member, making it easier to determine whose things are whose. For example, if you have more than one child, it can be confusing to remember which kid gets the pink underwear and which kid gets the yellow pair. Twins? Yikes!

Have each family member discard dirty items in a personal clothes hamper or basket. If you want to wash clothes together to have “full loads,” mix them with opposite family members — dads with daughters, mothers with sons. Separating those clothes from the dryer should be no problem. 

It’s never fun to do laundry but having a “system” makes the chore all that easier. Setting up the perfect laundry room definitely helps. Better yet? Hire a laundry service to do the job so you won’t have to deal with it at all!