The Simple Laundry Room Storage Solution Pinterest Is Loving

Keeping on top of laundry is hard enough, but add to it a cramped laundry room and your objective has become all the more difficult. If you are unable to move freely around the space or find the right cleaning product when needed, you may think that all hope is lost — unless you get a new home and bigger laundry room. Luckily, that's not the case, as a simple and affordable storage solution can help you make the most of your small laundry room and keep things functioning smoothly, as showcased on Pinterest from My Sweet Savannah. The product you should purchase? An over-the-door-organizer. While these are typically used in pantries or clothes closets, they can also be used to store items in the laundry room.

Over-the-door organizers are cost-effective options for rooms that are short on shelving or floor space, as they provide multiple storage opportunities without further impinging on your already-limited footprint. Since the shelves extend from the top of the door to the bottom, you get to take advantage of mid-wall-height space that normally goes unused. The correct organizer will give you ample room to store everything from laundry detergent and fabric softener to paper towels and cleaning sprays.

The beauty of over-the-door organizers is how versatile they are: you can use them for anything and everything. While the blogger on Pinterest uses her organizer for paper towels, laundry detergent, multi-purpose cleaners, and fabric softener, you could easily load yours with a clothes steamer and iron or a towel, shampoo, and brush for dog-washing day — the choice is entirely yours. You can choose to add labels to the organizer, making it easier for your family to locate certain items when needed. Or, you could take a page out of My Sweet Savannah's example on Pinterest and paint the inside of your door with chalkboard paint, then use chalk to label each of the organizer levels.

The over-the-door design is an excellent way to organize your laundry room for most people that have lots of unused space behind their laundry room door. However, this hack won't work in rooms in which it is already difficult to open or close the door all the way, as adding several inches of depth to your door's footprint may only complicate matters further. Further, when using a shelved organizer with spaces between the rungs, small items — think clothespins or bottles of essential oils — can easily fall through the rungs and cause a disorganized mess. In that case, add small organizing containers that will fit snugly on the shelves of the organizer to keep everything in its rightful place. 

To get the most out of your organizer, give some thought to how you plan to use it and shop with those needs in mind. Some organizers will have shallower or deeper shelves, so you'll need to use a discriminating eye in order to select the right one. Over door organizers that will help you to create a functional laundry room can be found at most major retailers. For instance, the 6-Shelf Overdoor Storage Rack that costs about $22 at Home Depot offers ample storage and a simple aesthetic, whereas the Fixwal 5-Shelf Over The Door Hanging Pantry Organizer that's normally $19 on Amazon has larger plastic storage pockets, which are ideal for containing smaller, loose items.

While there is a lot to love about over-the-door organizers, be careful to not overload them with too much weight. The design of the organizer will help determine how much it can hold: ones with arms hanging over the top of the door will have a higher weight limit, whereas models that are mounted to the door may buckle under too much weight, resulting in a massive mess. Also ensure you choose an organizer whose appearance you enjoy — this includes color and overall design — as it should hopefully be a mainstay in your home for many years.