A quick and dirty (clean?) laundry makeover

Along with the wardrobe for our master bedroom, we also got shelving systems for our laundry and the Little Monkey's room at the same time. We bought from Wardrobes Direct, and we found the pricing extremely good compared to the options at the big hardware stores, and there were more colour options and the shelves are custom made to size.

You know it's not good when this is the best a real estate photographer can do...

The laundry is very far down our to-do list. It has some moisture issues, since the bright spark who built it thought it was a good idea to use the retaining wall behind the house as the back wall without any kind of moisture barrier. Therefore there's a possibility that we'll need to pull it to bits entirely at some point, but there was no venting for the dryer (and no clothesline) when we moved in, so we're biding our time in case the issues aren't as severe as they first looked.

We don't use the cupboards because they're actually the retaining 

wall and therefore quite damp - hence the mess on the right! 

In the meantime it was not only a giant mess, but also not very child safe. Which was a shame, since watching the washing machine and dryer in action is apparently super entertaining for small people.

I didn't get any action shots, but assembly of these shelving systems is pretty easy (even easier when your walls are sarking - no need to use gib anchors or search out studs). There's a top rail which gets screwed on, then vertical hangers which hook onto the rail and then also get screwed onto the wall. Then you just hook the shelf brackets onto the hangers, place the shelves and screw them on so they won't budge.

Then we had to shift the clothes airer, as it was in the space now occupied by shelves. This involved unscrewing the hooks from the ceiling, shifting them into their new location (these do want to go into ceiling battens if possible because of the weight when loaded), and then adjusting the string so that it still hangs level. This last part is the fiddliest bit but is mostly just trial and error.

The airer now hangs over the door, which means if we load it up at the door end we can't close the door, but that's fine - we tend to just use it for the odd non-dryer-proof thing, and when I get my proper clothesline there'll be much less drying things inside (can't wait!).

I couldn't turn on the light for the after photo because it was inadvertently disconnected by the sparky... One step at a time! 

So here's the end result - it's not super flash, but it does make it a lot easier to do a load of laundry, and also to locate our various cleaning products whilst keeping them away from little fingers. And being able to hang shirts instead of stuffing them into an ironing bin should make everyone's favourite chore slightly less awful.

Laundry storage
Budget: $150
Timeframe: 1.5 hours
Who did the work: Me and my dad
Actual cost: $135
Learnings: We should have done this ages ago because it makes doing laundry easier and it was very quick!