Upgrading your laundry room is probably the furthest thing from your thoughts. Let’s be real. As long as the machines are working and you’re able to stay mostly on top of it, then what’s the bother? Well, it just so happens you can add a lot of value to you home, and capitalize on the space you’ve got to work with, by creating a laundry room combo. A laundry room combo? What is that? In other words, a multipurpose laundry room. We’ve got the skinny on the best mashups known to homes.
Thinking Logically
While it isn’t the top earner of renovation returns, taking the time to reconsider your laundry room – including its location – makes sense. Doing the laundry is already an unappealing task to undertake. When your machines are in a remote location of the house, the motivation to get to the room to actually do the laundry becomes even worse. If you were to move it to an area you frequent more often, however, it becomes easier to include in your daily tasks (which in turn makes it easier to stay on top of this never ending story).
If you’re moving your laundry room and combining it with another room, think logically for a second. Brass tax, the laundry needs electricity and water. Moving the laundry can be expensive if you have to build out new water lines. If you combine it with an already existing water line, such as in the kitchen or a bathroom, then the cost goes way down. This is one case where mooching is an excellent plan. Here are some popular combos that are near established pipes.
Pantry
It’s not directly in the kitchen, but just off of the kitchen. Moving your machines into a pantry gives you easy access to all the extra food items you have to store and the laundry while you work in the kitchen. The kitchen sees a lot of action during the day, and since, for the most part, laundry is a set it and forget it type of deal, it increases your productivity because you can start a load of laundry, clean up last night’s dinner mess, change it over, prep tonight’s dinner, and so on and so forth.
En Suite
An en suite is the perfect pair for a laundry combo. It already has plumbing, plus a sink (that could be deepened to double as a work sink for hand washables and pretreating stains), and you may have some leftover space to add a few helpful features, such as a drying rack or steaming closet. You can easily mask the machines by building a sort of closet with accordion french doors so that when you have guests over and they use this loo, they don’t have to stare at your dirty laundry while tending to their business.
Mudroom
The mudroom is a random extra room, often at the side or back of a house, that separates the main house from the garage. It’s the room that gets all the mud trucked in from outside. Or at least it did before paved walkways were run of the mill house features. Because this room is near an entrance, it makes a great companion for the laundry as you’ll be able to deposit any dirty clothes directly into the laundry hamper without tracking dirt and grime into the rest of the house. You’ll also be able to toss in a quick load before heading out to run errands. Features like a coat rack, shelves or hooks for bags and hats, even some cubby spaces for shoes, flesh out this room into a quaint and useful new space you may just come to truly love.
