The laundry room may not rank at the top of your list when you’re considering features for your new home in New Jersey. But what can you do to get the most out of this hard-working space?

One thing you can do is to ask your laundry room to multi-task.  Here are just a couple of ideas for making that happen.

Extra Storage

In all the years we’ve been building homes, we’ve never had anyone come back to us and tell us they have too much storage. Your laundry room can give you some additional storage space that’s easy to access.

One way to do that is to install floor to ceiling shelves or cabinets. Put things on the top shelves that rarely get used. Keep a step stool in the laundry room for easy access to things on the top shelves.  Pulling out a step-stool is still more convenient than having to march all the way down to the basement or out into the garage to find what you’re looking for.  And you can use the space in the laundry for items that might be sensistive to heat or cold.  It’s also a good place to keep some things that may be a bit fragile that you’d be uncomfortable keeping in the basement or the garage.

Pet Space

Many homeowners have their laundry room double as a place for pets to say.  Often pets prefer warm closed in spaces—particularly when their humans are away.  The laundry room can be a warm, safe-feeling place for pets to sleep when you’re gone if you don’t want them having the run of the house.  And because laundry room floors are generally easier to clean, there will be less of an issue if pet accidents happen.

Enhanced Laundry Capacity

You may, of course, simply want to make your laundry room more efficient at a laundry room!  You might consider building in a fold-down ironing board or folding table.  Or you might build clothes hampers into the laundry cabinets.  And you might even be able to train your family to sort their laundry by dark and light colors.

 At any rate, your laundry room doesn’t have to be just a place to put the washing machine and dryer. With a little imagination you can get much more out of it.