Organise my Utility

I think of the utility as the hub of the home - the nerve centre. Where (if you are lucky enough to have the space) you can do all your laundry, mending, ironing and store household items and cleaning items, in fact, the list really is endless!

Take a look at all the great tips that you can use today to get started on organising your own utility, whether you have a dedicated room, or its part of your kitchen / garage - anywhere can be transformed to help you run your home to perfection!

• Decide on what you want to use the utility for, some main reasons are as follows - laundry (washing, drying, ironing), storage (for excess household products, cleaning products etc...), place for coats and shoes, sink area, housing a fridge / freezer.  and also what style you want it to be - open with baskets / closed and minimal etc....

• Once you know what you are going to use the space for, write a list of all the items around the house you will put there, and designate a shelf / cupboard to them (labelling works really well as then you know whats missing or where things go)

• Keep dangerous items such as bleach, matches and razors out of reach of little children - a top shelf or cupboard is great

• Keep like with like i.e. all washing products in one cupboard, all general household items in another, all sewing kit items in another etc... then you will be able to find things quickly

• Can you free up space in your kitchen by moving things into the utility?

• Try and have space for your laundry and all the different stages it can be - this makes it easier to stay on top of things i.e. laundry bin by washing machine, drying area, ironing area, mending area etc...
  

• Built in storage works really well in this room, as it maximise the space available. Take a look at the following picture for ways to maximise built in storage (these are from a clients who wanted specific compartments in her utility for various items, we used HOWDENS cabinets and internal storage to achieve a fantastic result! (Please contact me to arrange a design suitable for your room). As you can see, we used the following tricks to make this room as functional as possible

• Maximise the way you use this room by setting up routines for the family - this is best shown by an example - LAUNDRY. Ensure that everyone in the family brings their laundry down into the utility room each day / week, and sorts them into whites / colours / handwash etc.... This will make it easy for you to do a wash when suitable (either based on a routine, or based on how much there is to do!), keep things moving through the system, so hang to dry as soon as washed, and once dry sort and put away, or pile up ready for each family member to put away, or put into ironing pile. Never leave things too long as you will otherwise get overwhelmed.

• For ease of sorting out laundry, have a coloured basket for each family member - and add in any items that they need to put away (this can also work well for any items found around the house, as then it saves you having to go to each room individually and put them away yourself).

• This is a great place to house things like a first aid kit, a sewing kit, a box for items needed in a power cut (torch, candles, matches etc...), in fact, anything that you need to run your home smoothly.

• When you go to the supermarket, make the most of offers to buy in bulk - keep the rest in the utility and then you will also be able to see what you are running low on without having to go to each room (i.e. keep a stock of toilet rolls, shower gel, toothpaste, cleaning products, etc... here and when you do the homes shop you can just scan the shelves to see what you are running low on)

• Usually the utility can be a way out of the house, or into the house - so get your family into the habit of taking off shoes when they come in from the garden - this will save you time cleaning the floors! - have a shoe rack and coat rack available to keep things neat and tidy

• Add childrens names to labels on their clothes - makes it so much easier to sort out whos whos if you have lots of children

• If you have washing thats always in high piles - then quite simply you need to do more - try and do at least 1 wash a diy to keep on top of things - and alternate between whites, towels and colours to ensure you never run low of things (another way is to do a load of washing per person - at todays low temperatures you really don't have to worry so much about whites and colours and it saves a lot of times sorting!)

• Why not enlist outside help? Ironing is one of those tasks that can easily be outsourced - saving loads of time - and often for less than you think. You need to ask yourself what you time is worth and what else you could be doing.

• Keep a bag ready at all times for each of the following - then you can easily pick it up when you are heading out to do errands - DRY CLEANING, ALTERATIONS, CHARITY etc...