Laundry & Linens Archives | A Personal Organizer

Everyday Organizing Solutions For Busy Moms

By Helena Alkhas
Filed Under: Laundry & Linens, Organizing, Routines & Time

Use these everyday organizing solutions to make your daily life as a busy mom simpler.

For most families, weeknights are busy and hectic. Between homework, getting dinner on the table and making sure everyone’s in bed on time, there’s not much time for anything else.

Then Saturday rolls around, and you have an entire week’s worth of cleaning and organizing to do in one day. But isn’t Saturday supposed to be a day when you can put your feet up, read a good book, go to a sports game or spend time with family and friends? You deserve to enjoy a day without the demands of housework!

Use these daily organizing tips to keep your home organized and clutter-free throughout the week. They’re simple, fast and will prevent huge pile-ups of to-dos come the weekend.

1. Cook multiple meals at a time

Set aside 1-2 hours immediately after grocery shopping to cook meals and prepare ingredients.

When you plan meals for the week, choose recipes that use similar ingredients. Cook a large batch of food at one time and store it in the refrigerator until later in the week.

For meals that need to be prepared just before serving, prep as many ingredients as you can. Chop veggies, cook meat and shred cheese.

Organizing tips for busy moms. Williams Sonoma Cuisinart-multi-cooker — {I call this the “Mercedes Benz” of crockpots. And I love mine!}

2. Designate space for “unloading.”

Keep a small bin or basket near your front door to place your phone, wallet, keys, and loose change in. As soon as you come home, empty your wallet or purse of receipts and other items. You’ll never lose your keys again.

Everyday organizing solutions - Pottery Barn Entrance Organizing Solutions — {Pottery Barn Entrance Organizing Solutions}

3. Do laundry during the week

You could choose one night of the week to do the majority of your family’s laundry and make folding part of the evening’s activities. Or, toss a load into the wash just before you head to work in the morning. As soon as you get home, move it to the dryer. Your clothes will be ready to be folded and put away after dinner. I fold my mid-week laundry load while watching the news or something yummy on FoodNetwork.

Everyday organizing solutions - Gabrielle Laundry System — {Image Pottery Barn – Gabrielle Laundry System}

4. Sort mail as soon as you check it

If you don’t have 10 minutes to review your mail, don’t check the mailbox.

As soon as you pick up your mail, sort the important letter from the junk.

Immediately toss or recycle sales flyers and other junk mail you don’t want. Then read your other mail and, if required, take action immediately. If a bill is due, pay it right away. If something needs to be filed, walk it over to your filing cabinet immediately.

5. Wash the dishes every evening

After dinner, ask everyone in your household to place excess food in your trash or compost pile and load their dishes into the dishwasher.

Before you go to bed, run the dishwasher. With breakfast and dinner behind you, it should be full and ready to roll.

Running the washer at night guarantees, you’ll never have any dishes laying in the sink overnight and sets you up to stay on top of the dishes throughout the week. Plus, it feels fantastic to grab your coffee in the morning on a clean sink!

Traditional Kitchen by Pasadena Interior Designers & Decorators A. Peltier Interiors

6. Keep a family or household calendar

Put a large calendar in a place everyone can access, like on the refrigerator. Have everyone in your household put important events, obligations, and reminders on the calendar.

Every night before bed, review the next day to ensure you haven’t forgotten about anything. A shared calendar makes it easy for everyone to see what’s coming up and avoid scheduling conflicts.

organizing printables — Home Management Binder – Editable PDF files for you to download and use for years to come!

Resources for busy moms that I’m totally in love with:

100 Days of Real Food

Once a Month Meals

Simply Living Mama

Want a resource that will help you organize your home, routines, meals, and kids’ schedules all in one package? Grab the Purposeful Life Binder and organize every part of your home and life.

Grammarly proofread this post.

From Complete Disaster To Awesome Laundry Room

By Helena Alkhas
Filed Under: Decorate, Laundry & Linens

How A Facelift Transformed Our Dysfunctional Laundry Room Into An Awesome Mudroom/Laundry Room Combo

If you have been following the blog for some time, you know I have lived with a tight, walk-through laundry room in every home we lived in the last 16 years.

Our laundry rooms were either tight or they were outside of the house (think Southern California), without any type of structure or organizing system to support the activity it’s meant to.

I’m sure you know what I am talking about as we all have seen them: laundry rooms that sit in tight corners, dark basements, cold garages, closets or in a passage between the kitchen and the garage.

It’s hard to tackle the laundry when the space you’re working in doesn’t offer much comfort. Even more when it comes to doing the laundry which isn’t my favorite chore around the house, to begin with.

So, when we moved to our new home, I was looking forward to having a laundry area that would be both functional, comfortable to work in and of course, pretty!

woman holding a Yorkshire terrier in blue laundry room — Me and Tuff in the new laundry room.

The laundry here at home has a good size, however, it also works as a passage to the garage – yes, I know, again! and it’s also connected to the side of the house through a hallway forming an L-shape space.

We come through the garage from school, groceries, travels and like every family, we have our stuff and we need a place to store them.

We also use the side door daily when we go for walks, to take the trash out, to care for the yard etc.

In summary, this tight area gets A LOT of traffic and it has to hold A LOT of stuff.

And since we’re no longer living in sunny San Diego and are now dealing with extreme winters in Illinois, we have muddy boots and wet jackets that need a place to dry which means we needed a mudroom.

After we painted the entire house, inside and out, we wanted to take a well-deserved break from anything house related for a while.

The holidays were coming up, winter was showing its face again and we wanted to enjoy the season in our new home. So it was only in March of this year that we took a full breath and decided to get some work in the laundry room done.

We knew we didn’t want a full renovation, moving plumbing around, installing cabinetry or replacing the washer and dryer, so we asked our awesome contractor to work with us on a “facelift”.

Just enough work to make the room new, shake off the bad layout and install organizing systems that would work for our family.

The Plan For The Laundry Room

Change flooring
Paint ceiling and walls
Move cabinets to garage
Add trim and baseboards
Change sink (big enough to wash Tuff)
Install hooks
Install a bench
Install storage
Add lighting
Change hardware

Creating Temporary Solutions In The Mudroom

As I said, the room has an L-shape, being one leg the mudroom and the other the entrance from the garage and laundry area.

In the mudroom space, there were large kitchen cabinets that were taking the entire area, leaving a narrow passage to the side door.

There weren’t hooks or a space for coats, making our arrival in the house a mess, even more, when we had wet coats or jackets. And since there was no lighting on this side of the room, it always looked cold and drab no matter how much I cleaned or decluttered it.

white hallway with white cabinetry — How the mudroom space was before

To create a temporary storage solution for the jackets all I did was to install Command hooks. It drove me nuts to look at it but it saved the day for several months.

I actually have a bag full of these hooks, in several sizes and they have been a life-saver over the years. In every new home, until we figure out the use of the space, they’re a great organizing solution.

A Word On Cabinets As A Storage Solution

One would think that having all those cabinets would keep this space free of clutter but what I learned about cabinets, at least for my family, is that they make it harder to organize and keep things organized.

They require storage solutions (a.k.a. bins, boxes etc) that fit perfectly inside their space, that match their drawers and shelf sizes and it can become hard to find them, not to mention costly and time-consuming.

Having a counter-top also gives us a place to leave everything “for later” which many days results in the clutter you’re seeing in this photo.

So, for that reason I became a huge fan of storage solutions like Elfa from The Container Store which offers the flexibility I need to keep everything organized, easily accessible, and ready to use.

Here is how the mudroom is looking like without the cabinets and with new lighting.

Mudroom with external door and hooks on wall — Without the cabinets, we gained space to move, hang our jackets and dry our boots.

A wooden bench was built and painted for the mudroom and will soon be installed. It’s high enough for the boys to kick their shoes off and deep enough for us to sit even if their backpacks are around.

Fun Alkhas’ Mudroom Fact:

With a house full of “guys” that don’t really care if things are organized or how I decorate the house, I’m used to not hear from them on the changes I make, but this room earned a WOW from each of them when they first entered it. Even Tuff elected it as his new nap room!

The Laundry Room

As you can see below, this side of the room had nothing but a sink, washer, and dryer.

It lacked a surface to store laundry supplies, hold the laundry and the baskets, and the narrow area next to the sink quickly became a pile of shoes from the five of us.

white laundry room with washer and dryer — The laundry room before

I wanted to make this space look like it was a part of the house.

I wanted it to be easy to clean, keep organized and have everything we needed to come in and out of the house in the crazy Chicago weather, but also wanted to use the colors we used in the other areas of the house.

From the months we spent in our rental home, the first house we lived here in Illinois, I knew everything of personal use we needed would fit in 5 drawers, so I just needed to add storage for laundry supplies, paper towels, and the laundry baskets.

Since Addie is a runner and likes to keep his running gear here, I added a couple of drawers for him. This simplified a lot the laundry process of his running gear and my life too! Win, Win.

Tip: If your laundry is close to the door your family uses most consider keeping socks and daily used sports gearhere. One less load for you to carry to the bedrooms! 😉

Planning Storage For The Laundry Room

Armed with measurements and photos of the space, I went to The Container Store to plan the storage for our laundry room area.

The initial Elfa design we did, actually didn’t have drawers, but shelves.

I was planning on using baskets like the one I used in our powder room closet to hold our beanies, gloves etc. but after I came home and started thinking things through, I realized they weren’t going to be as practical as having drawers.

Elfa design for laundry room — The original Elfa design

So before installation day, I went back to the store and we redesigned it to fit drawers instead.

Another important change was the space above the drawers where you see “Short Hang” on the design above and a valet rod. The truth is, we don’t wash any delicate items that need to be hung to dry.

I have created a wardrobe for daily use that only has machine washable items and Addie’s work clothes go to the dry cleaner, so it’s really not the best use of space for us.

Tip: plan your space to work for your family needs. A rod with hangers may look great in a catalog but if you won’t use why buy it?

When your laundry room is so functional and pretty you even start enjoying the laundry! — The short hang rod space still there and was later changed to hold a shelf.

laundry room storage — The ironing board got tucked away and each of us has a drawer.

A sink to take care of my pots, wash dirty shoes or just give our puppy his weekly bath.

Keeping everything we use easily accessible and making it pretty.

organized laundry room with Elfa design — Tuff got his corner of our laundry room. His meds, shampoo, and gear are all here.

Now we have everything we use on a daily basis organized in this room.

From gloves, beanies, and scarfs, to running gear, hooks for jackets and a floor that is easy (and pretty!) to maintain our laundry/mudroom combo is a winner.

Items we seldom use also got a home. Things like Tuff’s travel bag, the kids ski helmets and goggles are now safely stored and out of the way.

I am so happy with this room that I am almost liking laundry day a bit more!

I truly hope our laundry room makeover gives you ideas on how to organize and improve your laundry and mudroom areas. Have a comment or a question? Leave them below.

Until next time!

Shop organizing products on this post — The links below are affiliate links and if you make a purchase using them I will receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

How I Do The Laundry Faster

By Helena Alkhas
Filed Under: Laundry & Linens

Use This Tip To Do The Laundry Faster (and less painful!)

To do the laundry is one of my least favorite tasks around the house.

And, considering the amount of time I dedicate to doing the laundry, it really feels like clothes are multiplying during the night in a clear attempt to defeat my best efforts to keep on top of my house chores.

OK. This is a stretch but confess, don’t you feel there’s always more laundry to be done than time?

I first learned that I’d be forever busy with laundry when our twin boys were born. Then, our third one came along and now, between towels, bedding and everyone’s clothes we run 6 loads of laundry a week. Unbelievable, right!?

The one good thing that came out of this infinite amount of laundry -other than my kids always wearing clean clothes, of course- is that I developed this simple trick that makes doing the laundry so much faster and easier.

Watch this quick video to learn how to simplify and get done with the laundry faster!

[Tweet “Clothes multiplying at night? Do the laundry faster with this easy tip!”]

What are your tricks to do the laundry faster? I’ll love to learn.

Leave them in the comment section below.

Looking forward to have your household chores planned and organized?

Use the Chores Printables Specialty Set to get your household routine in place, so you have time for more fun!

Here is what is included in the Chores Printables Specialty Set:

Your Big Picture-Goal Setting
Daily Chores Checklists
Weekly Chores Checklists
Monthly Chores Checklist
Yearly Chores Checklists
Get Ready for the Week Checklist

Images below for illustration purpose. All files are editable and can be used for years to come

Organizing the Laundry, Making Life Simpler

By Helena Alkhas
Filed Under: Laundry & Linens, Readers Love

How to Organize the Laundry Room in 5 Easy Steps

If you’ve got kids—or maybe even if you don’t—you probably spend a lot of time in the laundry room, which is usually one of the smallest rooms in our homes. And, well maybe we won’t ever make laundry an enjoyable chore, but learning how to organize the laundry and by having an organized laundry room will certainly make it easier. But, the good news is it’s not that difficult to keep your laundry room organized and efficient.

Shall we check how we can make this dreaded chore a little easier on us?

how to organize the laundry room — Image Pottery Barn – Gabrielle Laundry System

Image: Pottery Barn

1. Throw Away and Purge First

As in any organizing project, the best way to start is by planning, then going through each cabinet, drawer, and surface. Look at each item and ask yourself, Is this worth keeping? Consider if it has expired, is still usable, and if it is beneficial to the laundry room. As you make these decisions, be sure to put them in their respective piles—keep, bring it back to where it belongs, recycle or throw away.

The laundry room often becomes a catch-all for sort of items that never make their way to their specific homes, even more so, if your laundry room is like mine: right by the entrance from the garage! By clearing up this space of unnecessary and excessive items, you will make way for the area’s intended purpose: doing the laundry!

2. Sort Your Like Items Together

Now that you’ve gotten rid of the unnecessary items separate what’s left into categories—cleaning products, laundry accessories, baskets, etc. This way you can see what and how much you have.

A perfect place to store these items, in case you are short on storage space, is behind the laundry room door.

3. Use Storage Spaces

Utilize any built-in storage space you have. Use overhead cabinets to hold detergents and other cleaning products. Use open bins or baskets to keep items like ironing equipment, hangers, etc. Mount, a drying rack to the wall, to conserve space. Use small containers like jars to house coins and other treasures you find in pockets. Keep a trash can handy for any trash you may find in clothing as well as a place to pitch lint and used dryer sheets.

Image: 3178 Coneflower Drive

Install a drying rack for delicate items.

Image: Ballard Designs

4. Use Laundry Sorters

One of my favorite things to help me with the “laundry-generating-monsters” in our house is a three-bin laundry sorter I placed in the boys’ closet. It helps me get them to help me with the laundry, it has taught them how much work it entails and more mindful of each time they changed clothes. There are many different designs of laundry sorters that can fit your available space. Having a divided hamper will alleviate clothes laying on the floor and will make doing the laundry easier and will save you time.

Image: Pottery Barn

5. Regularly Straighten Up and Purge

Get into the habit of putting things in their proper places on a regular basis. Take a few minutes each time you do the laundry to put items back in their respective places. This small but helpful tip will help you maintain your laundry room’s cleanliness and stay more organized.