Doing the laundry is typically a chore for most people (myself included). There was nothing I dreaded more than lugging my hamper to the basement laundry room at my parent’s house and waiting hours for it to finish before I could wear fresh clothes.
So when we bought our #InspiredOnOssington home (NB*: Dave and I bought a house last year here in Toronto, completely gutted, and renovated it with our own 4 hands), I knew I wanted to create a space for our laundry that would inspire me to not hate the chore (at least by a little bit).
Proud to note that we happily succeeded and I am SO excited to finally revealing this space in our house (full house tour coming soon… I promise!)
This was our laundry room before (or, at least the space that we would transform into one)…
And this is our laundry room now…
Things To Keep In Mind
For Your Laundry Room
1
LOCATIONIt’s something that’s looked past quite a bit. But when you think about it, we do laundry at least once a week, which means it’s a big part of your life you give up to do laundry. That said, we wanted to make sure it didn’t feel tiresome. We decided to dedicate a space on our second floor for our laundry room. Right beside our bedroom, my solarium closet, and our master bathroom, its location has literally made “lugging” laundry into no lugging at all!
2
APPLIANCESThere are few sub-points for this one. It is, after all, the true statement piece of your laundry room. We ended up choosing these LG Appliances and purchased them from Best Buy Canada; and we could not be happier with our choice and investment. A lot went into the decision of spending our pretty pennies on it though:
Depending on how much you do laundry (e.g. do you have kids/room mates?), finding an efficient washer and dryer for your space is important. These LG Turbowash machines are high-efficient, which means that they take big loads and use the minimum amount of energy consumption required to tackle them. The machines also have LoDecibel quiet operation, which means that even if we’re taking a nap of washing our clothes overnight, our sleep isn’t disturbed.
This was probably the biggest category in our decision. Dave and I are huge tech nerds and we wanted to invest in machines that wouldn’t just wash and dry our clothes, but ones that would do them “smart”. These LG Turbowash machines have TrueSteam technology, which means it produces real steam to get rid of those questionable odours and pesky wrinkles on your collared shirts. Bomb.com. It also has tons of wash and cycle options that makes customizing each load perfectly each time easy-breezy.
Beyond looking for the best price, we were also super keen to find a retailer that would make the process of actually receiving our appliance seamless. Dave worked at Best Buy for a bunch of years and we had ordered all of our kitchen appliances from them in the past, so it was an obvious choice to go with them. To our expectations, everything was seamless. They called to arrange a drop off (we even had to change it on them a couple times due to our travel schedule), the installers were so helpful bringing the appliances up our narrow flights of stairs, and the machines were up and running within the hour.
3
STORAGEFor small Toronto homes like ours, space is still an issue. We have more room than a condo, but still scarce enough to still worry about how we’re maximizing our storage space. Since we don’t have a linen closet in our house, we wanted to make our laundry act as both. Dave DIY-ed these shelves using shelving material at Home Depot (around $25 a piece) and brackets from Ikea (less than $10 per piece). It was the perfect situation to keep all of our laundry tools, detergent, towels, and even bathroom necessities all in one neat space.
4
AESTHETICThe laundry room typically gets very little love when it comes to aesthetics. It’s normally hidden in the basement or behind some closet doors, so I totally get it; but we wanted it to feel like a space we actually wanted to hang out in.
We ended up picking up a sheet of acacia wood (the wood texture and material throughout our house) and customized it to create a folding table/countertop above our machines. It allowed for more storage, ease of folding, and a gorgeous statement to the space. Topped off with some greenery, black wire and wicker baskets, and the space had me feeling like Mrs. Pinterest.
Laundry isn’t meant to be fun, but why can’t it be? Every time I walk by the space now, I smile because it’s actually a room I want to spend time in. My rule of them? If I’d want to shoot in it, then interiors-mission-accomplished. The amount of time we spend at home is crazy and making our spaces into ones we actually love is something Dave and I are super passionate about.
We hope you like the laundry room, but can’t wait to hear what you think! Here’s to finding (and creating) the spaces in our homes we (actually) want to live in!
What do you think of our laundry room? What’s your favourite thing about your laundry room?
