The ultimate laundry planner

With a little careful planning you can streamline your laundry space to maximise its efficiency – whatever its size.

Unless you need your laundry to double as a mud room, clear out everything that doesn’t belong in there. If you need to hang coats or store footwear, invest in storage to keep everything corralled.

Zones

Create task-oriented zones: washing, drying, folding and ironing. It will help keep things organised and save mix-up mishaps.

Space

Include plenty of bench space to make light work of folding clothes – and ensure it’s kept as clear as possible so you aren’t having to tidy up before you set to.

Planning

Plan for your space. In a compact zone, go for a front loader washing machine, which can tuck under a bench or fit a wall-mounted dryer above. A pull-out or fold-down ironing board can be a useful inclusion, as it can double as a folding table when needed.

Designated ironing area

Assign a spot for your iron where it won’t come into contact with water, and position the ironing board close to a powerpoint so there’s less chance of the cord catching and pulling the iron onto the floor.

Storage

Compartmentalised hampers allow you to sort colours, whites and delicates as you go. The gold standard is built-in, pull down cabinets that will keep things super neat, but you can achieve nearly the same result with pretty baskets.

For more inspiration click here.

This article originally appeared on Home Beautiful.