Yesterday, I told you about the madness that was the moving of the shelves in the laundry room. Today, I wanna show you the awesome hanging laundry basket shelf my hubs made me.
The Laundry Basket Shelf: THIS was inspired by an image I saw on Pinterest but my amazing hubs just worked with what we had and created a perfect, unique shelving unit for my laundry room. I’ll explain the details of that more tomorrow.
This is my loving hubs hooking the dryer back up after building my cool shelves. He Loves Me! 😉
Here are the basic steps he took to make our specific shelves in which I wanted 4 baskets in a box from the floor all the way up to the bottom of the cabinets:
- measure the space you have available to determine how many baskets can fit {height & depth}
- measure the baskets using {length, width, height}
- our largest basket is 18" wide
- 26" long
- 12" deep
- Our largest basket is an 18x18 square and same depth
- determine how much wood is needed
- 1 sheet of plywood for the side, floor bottom, front, & top
- 1x2s for the basket rails {horizontal to sides}
- 1x2s for the braces for the rails {parallel to side}
- 1x2 scraps for the extra space to make the shelves a bit deeper
- cut boards
- we did 2 71.5" sides
- 25.5" deep
- top shelf 5.5" down from the top
- each is 14.72" apart giving us 16" between each basket
- 19.5" wide
- using a nail gun and nailed the first side to the bottom of the shelf as a support {since the bottom of the cabinet would be part of the top of the shelf}
- nailed the braces {parallel} and the rails {horizontal} to the first side
- nailed the other 1/2 of the top to that side
- build the box bottom and nailed to the side
- nailed on the braces and rails to the 2nd side
- attached the 2nd side to the existing "box"
Love this shelving!!! It makes sorting laundry so quick so I spend less time with laundry piled all over the house while trying to sort & fold. Here, I can just open the drier door, fold something quickly on the top of the drier, and then stick it in the appropriate basket.
We have labels on each basket to help with sorting and that basket returns to that spot after its emptied. {I plan to add these labels to the "Printables" post at the end of the month.
I do at least 1 load a night and the kids are able to do their "laundry chore" daily but often wait until the basket is about to overflow at the end of the week before putting it away. Our rule is, "If it's not hanging in your closet or in your dresser, its not an option to wear". This helps get stuff put away more regularly...or at least, if there's something they want to wear, they have to put Everything away before they can wear that item {after its put away}. lol
The other item I requested was a “Mud Room”. LOL This being the evil room my family enters through daily {or at least after I completely clean up the garage after all these projects} and guest enter occasionally, I need it to function as more than a laundry. I plan to share more about this aspect of the room later this week as well...and maybe we'll finish the bench before then. hehe
Now for the details of this shelf moving business. I decided to leave off the big heavy doors and go for open shelving. For me, open shelves MAKES me at least try to keep things organized and neat since everyone can see...everything. I also thought those hefty pieces of wood could better be used as shelving in the garage in the long run.
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